


How Do They Get Those Dogs to Talk on the Beer Commercials?

by easyforpauline



Series: an early name used for videophones [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Banter, Bathing/Washing, Biting, Bucky Barnes Eating Saltines, Crying, Degradation, Dom/sub, Domestic, Face Slapping, Gags, Hair-pulling, Hand Jobs, Humiliation, Impact Play, Kneeling, Labor Union Kink, M/M, Makeup, Manhandling, Nipple Torture, Objectification, Orgasm Denial, Painplay, Scratching, Stone Top, Super Normal Sex Exclusively, Verbal Pet Play, furniture humping, improvised bondage, normal sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:51:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9381278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easyforpauline/pseuds/easyforpauline
Summary: “Who’s the dog here?” Bucky asks. Steve continues drinking. His answer is lifting his hand from the counter and pointing at Bucky’s chest. “Great.  Glad we got all our identities shored up.”(Bucky Barnes: a fully customizable, fluid, and flexible product; ready to be subjected to DIY repair jobs and any decoration efforts Pinterest might bring to your attention.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This includes one brief scene featuring discussion of a fantasy that contains body horror and cannibalism. Details in end notes (I don't think it's as disturbing as this warning makes it sound but your mileage may vary!)

Steve’s changing the sheets on his bed and Bucky’s watching him, kneeling on the floor. Dirty bedclothes accumulate in a pile on his lap as Steve strips them off and flings them away. Steve likes just having him there, always has, whenever he cleans anything. Sometimes he’ll dust Bucky or go at his skin with steel wool or use his hair as a mop, but mostly what he asks for is Bucky’s presence.  

It’s never been completely clear what Steve gets out of it. He’s tucking in a corner of the grey plaid fitted sheet, and he’s wedged between Bucky’s body and the bed to do it. Leaning awkwardly over the mattress, his thigh shifting against the side of Bucky’s face.

Bucky says, “Can I help?” and without looking, Steve says, “You know you can’t. Don’t ask stupid questions.”

And that’s part of what Bucky gets out of it: the casual denial, and the implication that he’s not useful for anything but being on his knees.

“These are nice sheets,” he says as Steve moves on to the other three corners. “Real practical-looking. Utilitarian.”

“Uh-huh. You love utilitarian. That why your bed’s covered in smiley faces?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “They’re emoji. And it’s a _table._ It’s not gonna look nice. This, though. Looks like it’s out of a catalogue.”

“More than can be said for you.”

“Thanks?”

“’Thanks?’ Is that how you respond to being called someone’s abandoned DIY monstrosity?”

“No, I _hate_ that. Please, tell me I’m glamorous and precious instead—Of fucking course my response is ‘thanks.’ You’re a sweetheart.”

“That’s not my question, Buck.” He tucks the final corner in, then crawls across the bed, and Bucky winces at how he’s still got his shoes on, but it is Steve’s bed to dirty how he likes. He lies on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, looking at Bucky with a raised eyebrow. “We all know you’re grateful to be properly demeaned. My question is whether ‘thanks’ with a question mark is an appropriate show of gratitude.”

“Oh. Sorry about my manners.”

“You know, I feel like you used to be such a polite boy.”

“More than can be said for you.”

Steve lowers his head so they’re eye level, and he’s smiling and unblinking. With one hand, he cups Bucky’s skull, and he uses the other to stretch the fitted sheet away from the mattress. It pops off at a corner, but Steve makes to wrestle Bucky’s head down inside of it anyway. “Thank. Me. Properly.”

Bucky squirms, laughing, as Steve brings the sheet over his head. The elastic crosses his neck, and Steve’s hand’s a warm presence just below that, at his trapezius, pressing him into the mattress. “Christ, Steve, thank you. Thank you very much, all right? That insult changed my life and I’m forever in your debt. I’ll send you fucking flowers.” 

“What kind of flowers?”

“A dozen roses. You can throw ’em at me.”

“I’ll throw them at you after they’re shriveled. Don’t know why I’d waste good roses on you.”

“This is so romantic,” Bucky says. The sheets are flannel, soft on his cheek. The light from the ceiling fixture filters dreamily through them. Then Steve turns the pressure holding him down into a squeeze, and lifts the sheet off. Uses his hair to guide him into sitting straight.

Bucky scrunches his face up and butts his head against Steve’s hand like petting himself, and Steve’s hand trails down Bucky’s face to cover his mouth. Bucky kisses the pad below his index finger and nips him there gently.

Steve hoists himself up off the bed. Same side Bucky’s on. The sheet gets tucked back into place. Glancing at Bucky on his way to fetch the folded top sheet from his dresser, Steve says, “Your hair looks terrible.”

Bucky feels around to confirm. Staticky loops poke out from his head. “Gee, I wonder why. No one’s imprisoned me in a blanket fort lately.”

“I guess I’ve just been slacking on teaching you good grooming.” Steve flaps the folded sheet open and hoists it into the air. It wafts down over the bed.

“You never slack on anything. But I’d like if you groomed me anyway.”

Steve grooms the bed, tucking and straightening. Creasing his forehead as he works out the creases. “I said I could _teach_ you grooming. No one said I’d go near you.”

“You gonna set up bulletproof glass between us? Oh, shit, Steve. Do you know where to get a Hazmat suit? Teach me from in there.”

“And then what?” He stuffs his pillow into a case. “I confiscate your cosmetics and seal them in plastic bags?”

“Sure. To burn later. And you can undo my work by hosing me down.”

Before propping it up against the headboard, Steve swings the pillow to hit Bucky in the head. Bucky laughs with the collision, and again as it comes down to smack him full in the face. Steve throws the pillow onto the bed. He crouches to kiss Bucky’s cheek.

He says, “Sorry. But if we get our hands on a Hazmat suit, you’re the one getting stuck in there.”

Bucky kisses him on the cheek in turn. “My hero. I can work with that too.”

“You know I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.” Said cooing: “We just have to pray that no one kidnaps you, puts you in a room full of toxic gas, and—” Knifelike, he slides his fingertip in stripes across Bucky’s chest, and down his right arm— “slits the suit open.” He not-quite-winks, then stands, heading for the folded quilt.

Bucky watches how he clasps and unclasps his hands as he goes. Unconscious movement. “Right, ’cause you’re not describing my ideal wedding now or nothing.”

“Of course not. You want a small church ceremony like anyone else.” Deft hands unfolding the quilt, draping the quilt, smoothing it.

“Yeah, the thing about that? The two ain’t mutually exclusive.” Steve looks at him. “A thought for you. A church. You and me. Insane amounts of toxins.”

With the quilt all spread out, Steve lies back like he’s stargazing, letting out a pleased huff of air, his legs dangling off the foot of the bed. “You know what, Buck? You write up all the logistics for that and we’ll talk.”

“Just talk? That’s not much of a promise, Steve.”

Laughter bubbles up through, “No. It’s not. But you should do it anyway.”

“Oh, try and stop me. I’m researching abandoned churches in the desert right now. New fancy implant in my brain. I can Google shit and kneel with your laundry simultaneously.”

“Who’d consent to mucking around in _your_ brain? We’re all lucky your thick skull keeps that Jell-o salad from infecting the populace. Here. Gimme.” He’s rolled onto his side, holding his arms out toward Bucky.

Bucky does his part by balling up all the discarded bedclothes and throwing them to him. And Steve, for his part, tosses them in the direction of the clothes hamper. Their haphazard landing’s close enough.

Steve crosses the bed so that he’s sitting on the edge, to Bucky’s left. The back of his hand lifts Bucky’s chin. Steve, bright-eyed, kisses him on the forehead and says, lips still on Bucky’s skin, “I’m done. You did your job.”

“Oh yeah? When’s my paycheck arriving?”

“Excuse me?” He pulls back. Sets his hands on his hips. “I pay you under the table. You know that means?”

“Yeah, obviously.”  
  
Steve ignores him. “I stick you under the kitchen table, I feed you scraps, and I don’t stop you from slobbering on my knees. You saying you don’t want that anymore?”

“No,” Bucky drawls, “give me money.” He stands, stretching his left arm up and his right arm down. Vertebrae crack, and a yawn blurs his next few syllables. “It’s not like I’ve got gobs of _that_ these days. Gainfully employed and sitting on stolen evil Nazi fuck funds as I am. Practically destitute being cruelly kept by this mega-rich war-hero—” He gestures to Steve with a flourish of his wrist and Steve purses his lips, and inches back to rest on the bed more comfortably.

Bucky puts one knee on the bed next to him. Kisses the reddened tip of Steve’s ear.

“Sure,” Steve says. “No more under the table for you.”

Bucky growls, and Steve laughs. He pets Bucky’s hair, smoothing a part all the way through it, like he’s gonna put him in pigtails. “Easy, boy. I’m not giving up my favorite garbage disposal.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, mouth right over Steve’s ear, “I’ll be eating your table scraps for centuries, asshole. Try and stop me.”

Bucky gets his other knee under himself. Feeling tall, he wraps his arms around Steve in a sideways hug, smushes his nose into Steve’s cheek, and hears and feels Steve sigh in relief. Then Steve’s kissing him, gentle, one small but startling bite to Bucky’s tongue so Bucky’s shoulders heave, before pulling away and studying Bucky’s face. Bucky ends the hug and hangs his hands by his side, palms open toward Steve.

“Somethin’ up?”

“No.” Steve clears his throat. “No, nothing.” His voice is too casual when he adds, “Have you ever watched two women put makeup on each other?”

“Probably? Not that I can recall, but that’s not much of an indicator.”

“Whether you can recall is the real question.”

“I’ve seen ladies do their makeup on the train. Steady hands appreciate steady hands,” he says, holding up his left hand.

“Okay, well I’ve seen women do each other’s makeup a hell of a lot of times.”

“Such a braggart. Not all of us had your extensive experience as an _actor_.” He flings himself like a starfish across Steve’s lap. Presses the back of his wrist to his own forehead.

“’Actor’ is so vague. I prefer to think of myself as having been a star.” He knocks on the star on Bucky’s arm. Bucky knocks back on Steve’s chest, where the star would have been.

“Yeah, and I prefer to think of doing my laundry as going to the carnival. Self-delusion is a hell of a drug.”

“Shut up, asshole. I’ve offered to do your laundry.”

Bucky bends his left arm to lightly scratch at Steve’s knee. “Thanks for that, but I like doing my laundry. It’s practically going to the carnival.” He laughs at his own joke. Beams at Steve. “Why you asking about the makeup?”

“It’s just, you know. It’s nice. When they do that for each other. It’s.” He visibly swallows. “Tender? So.”

“Okay.” Bucky squints. “Do you wanna—I mean, watch videos online of that? There’s a lot of shit about cosmetics on the internet.”

“No. I mean, I should.” Steve swipes two fingers across his own eyelids, stares off to the side so Bucky’s treated to a view of the near-right-angle of his jaw. Still sometimes a shock—like someone’s carved it into this straight line only moments before—but especially when he acts shy. “I started saying it, but now I feel like a creep.”

“Because you like when women are nice to each other? You’re kind of skipping over a lot of details here, pal.”

“You know, I just. Sometimes. Before a show, I would see one of the dancers holding another dancer’s face still and lining her lips or fixing her eyeshadow for her. And it always looked. Very intimate.”

“And you liked that.”

“Yes. Not that—Not _them_. I liked it as an idea. I thought about doing that with you. But I didn’t exactly get a chance to. And then I remembered the other day. So. Now I’ve said.”

“And this makes you feel creepy?”

“Well, I didn’t wanna drag them into it! They didn’t know I was making it sexual _._ ”

“I don’t think they care! And, you know.” He rotates his hand on his wrist and shrugs with his face. “And you don’t even know that it was _never_ sexual for them. How much stuff you think anyone ever saw us do that they assumed was above-board friendship?”

“Oh, come on, Buck, that’s—Only a few of them were even, you know, ever with each other, and it’s _still_ their private business. Just ’cause they might be dead—”

“I’m not _asking_ for their names and headshots, all right? You need to be respectful, you need to be respectful. I get it, but it’s also got nothing to do with anything. You can put makeup on me. That’s what you’re asking?”

“Yes. I guess. I mean, a good fucktoy should be pleasant to look at, huh? I was thinking of sending you away for modifications, but I’d rather oversee this personally.”    

 “Aw. The spirit of charity’s alive and well.” He playfully socks Steve on the jaw, and when Steve scowls at him, pretends to cower, throwing his hands up in front of his face and smiling huge.

 

 

 

 

Beer-breathed and worn out all through his body, Bucky sat cross-legged on their shared bed, his finger marking his place in a pulp. Steve leaned against the pillows, his beer half-empty, its neck swallowed by his fist. The Adam’s apple bobbed in his skinny throat as he stared into the corner of the room, contemplating something that Bucky wasn’t privy to.  

Bucky yanked out three of his own hairs with a quiet gasp and slipped them between the pulp’s pages as a bookmark before dropping it to the floor. That got Steve’s attention, and Bucky said to him, “You know somethin’? You’re Tinkerbell.”

“Excuse me?”

“What I said. You’re Tinkerbell. You’re small—” Steve pinched him on the arm, and Bucky smiled, unapologetic—“Sorry, but small, and mad, and you’re always pinching me and pulling my hair.”

“Really? That Tinkerbell’s entire character? That everything you can think of about me?”

“No.” And Bucky slinked his way over to Steve, curling his body around him. He laughed in Steve’s ear.

Steve shrugged so his shoulder knocked Bucky’s chin, sharper and weaker than a punch. He took a sip of beer. “What the fuck are you about to say to me?”

Bucky kissed the bump of his tragus. Giggling a little, “And you make me _fly._ You sprinkle _fairy dust_ on me, Steve, and I—”

Steve was shoving him off, down onto his back, putting his beer on the floor beside the pulp and grabbing Bucky’s hands. Bucky wriggled beneath him, laughing. Then Steve settled his weight on Bucky’s hips, wrapping a hand around each of the wrists he’d trapped in the air. He raised and lowered an eyebrow. “You’re looking to get hit, Buck, you can just say so.”

“Maybe I want to get hit _and_ call you a fairy.” He strained up, trying to get kissed, trying to get bitten, even with his hands between them, and Steve squeezed his wrists harder before letting them go.

Steve motioned at the mattress with his head, and Bucky dropped his arms to rest at his sides. “A fairy who bullies you and makes you fly.”

“That’s it. That’s all I’m saying. You do. And I believe in you.”

Steve sighed. Started to smile. And backhanded Bucky’s face. Startling and clean in how the pain zoomed across the skin. He said, “Can’t imagine what you did to earn all that fairy dust. But I guess I’d better keep supplying it if you’re so attached.”

“I am. I’m attached. To prove it: You wanna get another lick in?” He turned his head to offer Steve his unmarked cheek.

Steve kissed him there. His lips were dry. He whispered, “Want I should bite off your hand and give you a hook instead?” the words smelling yeasty and thick.

“Tinkerbell doesn’t do that, idiot.”

Steve did get another lick in then, open-palmed on the cheek, and a high noise crawled out of Bucky’s mouth, wanting. “Maybe Tinkerbell’s feeling more violent these days, Buck.”

He swiped his thumb over the bulb of Bucky’s nose, smiling, and Bucky smiled back and told him, “Wouldn’t complain if she was.”

 

 

Tomato pulp’s wet on Bucky’s chin and he’s got his arm crammed in the newspaper box for the last wrinkled copy when his phone buzzes in his pocket. He holds the newspaper between his side and his left armpit, transferring the open crate of tomatoes to his left hand. The box’s mouth bangs shut.

It’s from Steve. _Sam says he can see you from across the street._

He looks up, scanning for Sam, who’s throwing an empty plastic bottle into the recycling. Wearing sunglasses and carrying a canvas tote over his shoulder. It’s not too obvious that he’s watching Bucky, but he is, so Bucky jerks his chin up at him in acknowledgment. Sam copies the movement. Starts to smile and turns abruptly to look in a shop window instead.

Bucky texts back, _Yeah, I’ve known he was there for a few blocks. Please tell him that. Thank you._ The phone stays in his right hand as he resumes walking, tailed by Sam, who will inevitably get bored and have real places to be. But not just yet.

Without much concern for civility, Bucky lifts the tomato crate to mouth level and bites into the half-eaten fruit on top. Lumpy and veined with green, firm between his teeth. The world is bright and cold today, blinding and lush. Some tomato juice drips onto his newspaper.

A buzz again. Steve again. _TALK TO EACH OTHER DIRECTLY._

With his smart-gloved hand, Bucky swipes out the words, _I told you I’m only talking to him if he uses a carrier pigeon._ The phone goes back in his pocket.

At a red light, finished eating, he takes another tomato from the crate. Sam’s crossing the street toward him now, and Bucky catches himself before he squeezes the fruit to pieces in surprise. But he stays in the moment, and smiles at Sam, and holds the tomato up in the air like he’s going to throw it. Sam just flips him off, and brushes shoulders with him at the corner, and continues straight ahead.

From Steve, after a while, when Bucky’s almost home: _Sam says he thought you were a better shot than that. For shame, Buck._

Bucky asks, _how much shame are we talking here_ , and all he gets back is, _When you get home, I’m gagging you._

But Steve doesn’t gag him when he gets home. What he does is meet Bucky at the door, and kiss the corner of his mouth, and shove him backward so hard the door shudders. Then he smiles and takes the tomatoes and newspaper out of Bucky’s hands. On his way to the kitchen, he tosses over his shoulder, “I could’ve sworn we agreed you’d start bringing me this in your mouth.”

Bucky follows. “Newsprint’s toxic, Steve. Haven’t you heard the good news?”

“Oh, really?”

“Sure. A full-page spread in _Scientific American_. Why it might be dangerous to fuck your pet’s mouth with the _Times_.”

“Well, you could be a medical miracle. Maybe newsprint only makes you stronger. Lord knows you need all the strength you can get.” He tosses the paper and the tomatoes on the table. Turns on the sink and bends down to drink straight from the tap. He slurps, his eyes closed, as Bucky watches an upturned slice of his face. Strong throat-pulls, and his long eyelashes getting damp with it.

“Who’s the dog here?” Bucky asks. Steve continues drinking. His answer is lifting his hand from the counter and pointing at Bucky’s chest. “Great.  Glad we got all our identities shored up.”

Steve’s messy, hair getting wet too. No finesse at all about his sink-drinking habits. And Bucky rolls his shoulders and gets to assembling a snack.

Wet-faced and looking satisfied, Steve sits at the table with the paper. And Bucky perches on the counter, popping grapes in his mouth, watching him. How he gets the crease wrong when he folds the pages back up. His knuckles rubbing over a headline, and the way he holds his mouth open. Grapes; saltines; the heels of Bucky’s boots clacking when he kicks the drawers; Steve frowning at the op-eds, crumpling the corner of a page.

Bucky’s phone is out on his thigh so he can check the time. If he has to. He tries not to. Steve grunts and crumples the paper more purposefully, half up the page. He spits on whatever’s there and Bucky laughs silently. Then Steve’s standing. Comes to lean his hip against the counter and watch Bucky eat.

Bucky tilts his head. Looks from Steve’s soft mouth to the tomatoes on the table. “Does it really upset you?”

“Your voice? Sure, but I’m used to it.”

Bucky rolls his eyes and flashes his phone screen at Steve; it’s open to his contact page for Sam. Steve reaches out and presses the call button and Bucky jerks the phone away, hanging up, glaring. “Please don’t actually order me to talk to him.”

Steve says, “I’m not _going_ to, yeesh. Sorry. Something about how I value your trust. And it doesn’t upset me.”

“’Cause you think it’s funny.”

“I don’t think I get the joke. Who is it a prank on, me or each other?”

“It’s not supposed to be a prank. It’s a genuine expression of our feelings.” He jumps off the counter to copy Steve’s lean.  

“I asked Sam and he said it was ‘conceptual art.’”

“I don’t so much know what that is, and I don’t believe in being contrary for no reason. But I also don’t believe in agreeing with Sam.”

“Sounds like a pickle.”

“You know how much I love pickles.” He kisses Steve’s collarbone, close to the hollow of his throat.

“You calling me a pickle? What does that mean? I’m sour?”

“Means I bought you at the deli. Not everything’s an insult.”

“You’re right. My mistake. Everything’s just nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense. You were floating in a bin of other pickles. You were in, you know, the brine.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I looked at the other pickles, and I looked at you, and I said, there we go. That’s the one. That scary-lookin’ small one.” Another kiss, perfect center of the throat-hollow, bulls-eye.

“Wow, I’m getting more flattered by the minute.”

“So I used the tongs and got you out.”

“And the tongs in this scenario are?”

“My feminine wiles.”

“I don’t know how I feel about this revisionist history.” Steve skritches behind Bucky’s ear, and Bucky ducks his head, softening with it. The skritching turns into a pinch, and then Steve’s big hand is on Bucky’s cheek, pushing him away.

Feeling biddable, Bucky, turns to face the counter, where a few crackers and grapes remain on his plate. “I tell it like I see it, pal. I _charmed_ you. I _seduced_ you.”

“It’s nice that you have daydreams, Buck,” Steve says, clearly trying not to laugh, and he opens up the icebox and surveys its insides.  

Bucky huddles over his food to work through it, elbows squared on either side of the plate. One hand, robotic, pops grapes into his nearby mouth. And then the crackers, each stuffed whole behind the gate of his teeth. His mouth and his hand are both perfect machines, and he’s done, and he moves his plate to the sink.

And Steve’s still where he was. Steve’s staring into the icebox like it’s giving him an interview. He cuts his eyes to Bucky, then back. A smile flashes across his face in the same instant. “You thirsty?”

“Not really.”

“Are you attached to that outfit?”

“Yes?”

“Might want to take it off then. That’s just my suggestion.”

Keeping his eyes on Steve, who continues to—“You’re letting out all the cold air, Steven.” Steve sighs dramatically and closes the icebox door. Leans against it with his arms folded, smirking at the wall. Keeping his eyes on Steve, Bucky struggles his boots off. Strips out of his trousers, yanks his tee-shirt over his head, and throws them both onto the table.

His fingers catch in the waistband of his boxers. “Ahem,” he says instead of clearing his throat. Steve stops pretending to not be watching him in his peripheral. “What should I do with these?”

“Buyer’s choice.”

“Can you tell me the likelihood of buyer’s remorse?”

“I don’t know. Have you had any yet?”

“ _No,_ asshole. Never.”

“Well then. Buyer beware, but keep your modesty if it makes you happy.”

He keeps his modesty. Whatever he has of it. If it weren’t going to be funnier for Steve to torment him with his underwear still on, he would have made him take them off.

Steve opens the icebox back up, using the door to block what he’s doing. “’Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain’?” Bucky asks.

Steve says, “Of course. My existence is private,” and then there’s the sound of furiously sloshing liquid, and oh, right _._ Naturally.

 

 

 

 

When Steve was feeling confident—which was more often than anyone but Bucky thought he had a right to be—and when he was home before Bucky was, he would strip Bucky at the door to their apartment. Kick it shut before Bucky got the chance and alight on him, dismantling with his quick, bony hands.

Pilfering Bucky’s tie clip and tie, unbuttoning his shirt and pants and undoing his suspenders. All while staring at Bucky like challenging him to say anything. And Bucky would go easily, letting himself be stripped down to his white cotton undershirt and boxers.   

The first time, he’d said, “Someone’s eager,” and Steve, flinging the just-freed necktie over his own shoulder, had said, “It just doesn’t make sense to me that anyone’s wasting all this good material on you.”

Today, he said, “You’re making this shirt look terrible, Buck,” unbuttoning the cuffs. “Really, I’m doing it a favor by getting it off you.”

“Always a good Samaritan,” Bucky agreed.

Suitably undressed, he got their lunch out of the paper sack he’d had to put down in Steve’s haste. Sandwiches wrapped in butcher paper, and two glass bottles of Coca Cola, and a Sky Bar to split. They sat opposite each other at the card table, Bucky’s bare knees squished against Steve’s trousers, making him overly aware, with each bite of pastrami, of his relative nudity.

Steve had perfected the art of popping his bottle cap off with his teeth, so it ricocheted to somewhere else in the room as he drank his soda. Bucky, however, was left to pry at his cap with a fork. It wasn’t that they didn’t own a bottle opener; it was just that he suspected Steve liked to see him struggle a little. And he could give that to him easy.

After some fiddling and re-angling on Bucky’s part, the fork prongs wrenched off the cap. It skidded across the table and onto the floor. And the soda flooded upward and exploded all over his lap.

“Piece of shit,” he hissed, and jerked the bottle away from his body. All that did was cause it to tip some more gushing soda onto his legs. Sticky and cool. He bit his lip for calm, and clacked the bottle down properly onto the table. The foam was dying off.

His drawers and shirt clung to his body in great damp patches when he stood and looked down at himself. He raised an eyebrow. “Good thing I wasn’t properly dressed, huh?” And he saw that Steve was staring at him with unsettling stillness. Except for his eyes, narrowed, scanning Bucky’s body. Dramatically, to make sure Bucky knew he was being scanned.

“What?” Bucky said. “What’s that look for?”

Steve smiled, wolfish. Said slow and patient like talking to a child, “I don’t know. What do you think?”   

He could feel his face heating. He chewed at some chapped skin on his lip and started to slide a hand up under his wet shirt. But Steve stood abruptly, and snapped his fingers, and pointed at the floor next to the table.

Bucky almost knocked the table over obeying, knowing why Steve was staring at him like that but unclear on what the end game was. He kneeled down, wet and uncomfortable, his hands on his thighs, the back of his head against the table’s edge.

But Steve took his time, managing to stretch out walking the couple feet from his chair.  He kneeled in front of Bucky, his posture slouchier, and Bucky straightened more in response. It wasn’t a position Steve would be able to hold for very long before his legs cramped. But he held it for now, inserting his knees between Bucky’s legs to force them open. He had his own glass bottle in his hand.

With his other hand, he brushed his knuckles against the wet spot over Bucky’s stomach, and Bucky took a deep breath in response. Steve asked, “You all right?”

“It’s Coca Cola, buddy, not a gunshot.”

“Yeah, thanks. How could I have figured that out for myself?” He stroked Bucky’s hair. “Still. What a brave guy. Weathering that shock.” 

“Gee, thanks. It was hard, but I managed.”

“Mm-hmm.” Steve took a long sip of soda. Then he spit the mouthful on Bucky’s face. Bucky spluttered. The liquid beaded down the side of his neck and rolled sweetly between his lips. “It’s teasing,” Steve explained, “to only look like a joke from the neck down. I want all of you looking stupid for me.”

Bucky made one shattered, needy noise. Steve’s hair was flopped over his eye, his free eye warm and beautiful. His jaw was set. And he kissed Bucky, licking at the soda above and below his mouth too, cutting his teeth into Bucky’s tongue to make him gasp. Then Steve shifted over to the side, pulling his bent knees up to his chest instead, curling his spine against the table leg.

He drank from his soda and sometimes passed it over for Bucky to drink from, and they talked about the theater sets Steve had just been hired to paint. Steve glared when Bucky began to stand to grab their sandwiches and the Sky Bar, and Bucky sighed and stayed put while Steve grabbed them. And Steve, the control freak, made him ask for permission before every bite.

So Bucky took larger bites, and the sight of his mouth stuffed full seemed to make Steve happy enough not to call him on abusing a loophole. The soda dried, and he smelled like sugar all over, opting not to wash the stains out or sponge off his skin, and Steve mocked him about it, saying that a swarm of bees was headed his way, ready to sting him in search of pollen.

“Yeah, you that swarm of bees?” Bucky asked, jabbing at one of Steve’s sharp, ragged teeth with his thumb pad.

Steve clenched his teeth around Bucky’s thumb so that it felt tight and aching when he slipped it out of Steve’s mouth. “I might be. For a certain pitiful mess.”

 

 

 

 

Steve beckons Bucky over with a jerk of his head. When he’s in arm’s reach, Steve hands him a bottle of Coke over the top of the icebox door. “Enjoy.”

“You know, they can lead a horse to a giant goddamn body, but they can’t make him grow up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about that I love you, okay?” He unscrews the cap, plastic and painless—even metal would be simple now—and pulls the bottle in tight to his body so that when the soda fizzes up and out, he gets drenched.

It might not be a surprise, but he still jumps. It’s well-chilled, trailing and bubbling down his stomach, all over his boxers, a steady drip down the inside of his thigh, and splattering on the floor. Steve is watching him with his tongue between his teeth, and Bucky smiles, tips his head in acquiescence. To be polite, not to tease, he dumps more cola on his head.

That startles a laugh out of Steve, deep and bright. “Look at you, going above and beyond. But you’re also wasting soda.” And he says again, “For shame.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut with enough determination that he can feel the surrounding muscles tremoring when he touches them. A wet lock of hair plasters itself across his forehead, and there’s so much liquid down his neck, running in rivulets over his left arm, the plates of which have locked closed and hermetic.

“You know,” Steve says, taking the bottle from Bucky’s hand and drinking, “you look like you pissed yourself. Just because I wanted you to.”

Bucky hides his face in his hands. “You’re seriously juvenile.”

“Bullshit. I’m a national hero.”

“Okay, but see, who isn’t these days?”

Steve puts the bottle to Bucky’s lips and helps him drink. “Fair point.”

Bucky stops drinking with an exaggerated refreshed _Ahhh._ He says, “Aren’t you gonna clean me up?”

“Do you want me to properly clean you up, or do you want me to deal with your revolting mess _?_ ” Grabbing Bucky’s hip with his free hand in a tight grip, narrowing his eyes.

“The latter.” If it weren’t the latter, he wouldn’t have accepted the soda in the first place.

Steve switches to grasping him by a hank of hair toward the front of his head. He says, “Why're you wasting time here then?” and turns, and starts walking out of the kitchen. It’s exactly like they’re holding hands, except that Steve walks slightly faster than normal, just far enough ahead of him that there’s a constant pull on Bucky’s scalp. And as the pain stretches out, it becomes a glowing current through him.

When he answers belatedly, “No idea, Steve. A weird mistake,” his voice has gone reedy. And he’s half-hard by the time Steve throws him into the bathroom. Obvious through the clinging wet fabric.

The water’s cold, but not frigid, and still low-pressure, so that’s fine, and Steve climbs in fully-clothed with Bucky, whose boxers are thrown on the floor. Crowds him into the corner, slick tile at Bucky’s back, trapping him there. Looking pleased and proud in the same way as a fox that’s just caught a rabbit.

It’s a detachable showerhead, and Steve stretches it out, spraying Bucky’s body in long vertical sweeps. Bucky’s dick softens with the cold, and he’s shivering, but Steve crowds him even further. Gets his hand around Bucky’s dick and rubs at him slowly, warming him back up. He breathes hot and obnoxious and cola-sweet air over Bucky’s face so he’ll scrunch up his nose and practically swoon into Steve’s chest. 

“There we go,” Steve says. “Too bad I’ve got my work cut out for me here, or I could focus on spraying this up in your hole. Get you all cleaned out for me to examine. Make sure you’re staying good and tight for me in there.”

“You could do that too. Anything, please.”

“Nah. I’ll worry about that thing later. Not like it’s going anywhere.” And he pauses in fondling Bucky’s dick to pat him on the ass.

Even as he continues spraying the cold water between their bodies, at Bucky’s neck and chest and chin, they kiss, Steve sucking Bucky’s tongue in and biting it through the kiss, as Bucky hears himself whimper and mashes his mouth at Steve inelegantly. Steve cleans him and jerks him and gnaws on Bucky’s lower lip, and when Bucky whimpers again and says “So, Steve, do you normally shower without soap, because we don’t gotta be roughing it any—” Steve directs the spray into his face.

Quick-reflexed, Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, but some gets in his mouth. He spits a little, blinks his eyes open. Everything’s hazy through his damp eyelashes. Now the water pours over his head, forcing his hair into his face further. His teeth chatter the slightest amount.

Steve says, “What? Something wrong? I’m just trying to get all the soda you poured on your disgusting face.” He gives him a gentler kiss, next to his eye. “I know you look like a kitchen sink drain, but that was good soda you wasted.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, cut off by a moan when Steve’s hand on his dick twists, and Steve’s soaking denim thigh nudges at the underside, making him twitch. Bucky’s aware for the first time of how much he’s slouched in the corner, Steve towering, how they might have done this before, Steve claiming every artificial bit of size advantage he could. Naked and shivering and caught off guard, Bucky knows he must look miniscule.

Bucky tries again. “Yeah. You spend a whole buck fifty on that soda?”

Steve drops the shower head. The spray goes chaotic, getting Steve in the face too, before settling for drooling a steady stream down the drain. Steve uses his freed hand to turn Bucky’s head sideways by the ear, pulling it tight between his middle and forefinger while pressing his thumbnail into the lobe like a jewel. He squashes his nose against Bucky’s cheek.

He says, “Hey, that’s a lot more than I spent on you back in the day.”

Bucky says, “Mmm,” and licks the shower wall to steady himself. Steve’s left hand, shielded largely from the water, is still hot against him, still tight and unhurried in jerking him off and sending sharp need zipping along his nerves, making him shudder more. But he’s still chilly and distracted all over the rest of his body. “Can I have hot water, Steve?”

“What’ll you give me for it?”

“Uh, my undying love and companionship.”

“Yeah I’m _really_ hurting for that.”

“No, Steve. Honey, you’re confused. The point is to hurt _me._ ”

Steve says, “Well, I’d hate to miss the point,” and then both of his hands are on Bucky’s nipples, pulling and twisting. “There we go. Can’t leave you running around cocky and unbruised. What would people think?”

“Oh,” Bucky says, and the word becomes a gasp as he writhes under Steve. “You know I’d tell them it was all my fault. After all, you do your best with me.”

His thumb soothes one of Bucky’s nipples while he pinches his nails into the other and Bucky squeaks. “Sure. Bop you on the nose with a newspaper when you growl at strangers—”

“I wouldn’t! I’ve been trained.”  

“Fine, bop you on the nose with a newspaper ’cause I feel like it and you need to remember your place. How’s that?”

“It’s good, Steve. Thanks for caring,”

And Steve nods, and gets his teeth around the nipple he’s soothing, sucking and biting at him probably hard enough to draw blood, and Bucky’s shivering more as the cool water dries, but Steve’s all over him and like a fucking human hot water bottle under his clammy clothes. He says against Bucky’s pec, “I’m not stopping you from coming, by the way. Hurry the fuck up and stop wasting my time.”

And he starts alternating between stroking him in quick jerks and rolling the skin of his scrotum between his fingers, tugging at him, and Bucky tries not to fuck Steve’s fist. Tries to press himself all the way into the corner and take it, to be Steve’s shower wall, good and sturdy, and he stops wasting time, and hurries the fuck up and comes soon enough.

Echoing around them: groans and whines like he’s been sobbing, dumb animal-having-a-nightmare noises. When he opens his eyes, Steve’s smirking up at him, still biting his nipple, a too-much sensation. Bucky slides down the wall, half-giggling, breathless.

Steve follows. He pets Bucky’s hair, and Bucky takes his hand and kisses the palm. “Wow,” Bucky says, “I’m _impeccably_ clean now.”

“Of course you’re not.” Water sliding down his nose, Steve twirls a finger in Bucky’s damp hair. “You’re as filthy as always, no matter what I do.”

“That’s a real tragedy.  You know you’re wet now too, stupid? Was that what you wanted?”

“It’s different. You look like a drowned rat. I look respectable. Like Humphrey Bogart caught in the rain.” He has his eyebrows arched, his chin lifted. Put him in a hat and maybe Bucky would gush in agreement, so he laughs. Thunks his head against Steve’s chest.

“Sure, sure. _I_ say things like that and you look at me like I’m crazy—”

“You are. You were saying things like that when I was the size of a broom.” It’s true, and he’d meant every murmured, _You know, you fucking look like Gary Cooper and I’m over here feeling like Gary Cooper’s pet dog._

“So? You were a handsome broom. I might be crazy, but that’s not why.”   

Steve rolls his eyes. Slides a hand under Bucky’s left arm, wrapping around him like an exoskeletal second rib cage. He says, “Always with the unsubstantiated claims.”

Bucky’s eyes shut, and he bites his lip as he smiles, further nuzzling at Steve’s chest. “Yeah,” he says. “Ask me some time about how I fought a yeti.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. But in the meantime—” He chucks Bucky under the chin with a knuckle, directing him to raise his head. Bucky does, and opens his eyes. “Let’s talk about what you’ll give me in exchange for soap and hot water.”

His undying love and companionship. And a promise that he’ll write an essay about how hideous his own face is and read it aloud while Steve keeps him tied to the kitchen sink.

 

 

 

 

Steve shows up and perches on the arm of the couch. He was gone when Bucky got home, but he’d left a Post-It on the molding of the living room doorway saying, _Carrots and beets in fridge_ , above a doodle of Elmer Fudd with wings on each side of his head.  

Bucky, too limp and wrung out by the day to scrub beets properly clean, collapsed on the couch with his arms full of carrots, and was zoned out watching TV with his mouth tasting spring-crisp when Steve slipped in and went to hide in his bedroom.  

Here in the living room, blocking some of the light from the lamp, Steve doesn’t look limp. His hand is too tight on the back of the couch as he perches, even as his face is soft, mouth slack. There are dry sweat stains under the arms of his shirt. He says, “You’re not transcribing?”

“No. I’ve seen this before.” Bucky pokes one finger into the cushion next to him. His hands are still damp from the carrots; he leaves a splotch. Steve gets the idea and smiles and settles on the couch properly. Bucky tips over, fitting his head into the crook of Steve’s neck. Pointing to each appropriate character on the screen, he explains, “He’s gonna accidentally wipe a tear off her face and fall in love with her. Something in her biology.”

“Well, that’s unnerving.”

“Yeah, well, what’re you gonna do? It ends okay.” He kisses Steve’s chin. “You wanna lie down with me?”

“With _you_? I don’t know. That’s a hard one.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Steve mouth twitches. He shoves at Bucky’s shoulder and starts to fall over sideways onto him. Taking the hint, Bucky scoots forward to make room for Steve to lie all the way down. Then he follows suit, stretching out with his back pressed close to Steve’s front. It’s a deep couch, but they’re not exactly small people, and he comes up to the edge of rolling right off. But Steve puts an arm around his stomach, puts a leg over his legs. Bites his ear and whispers into it, “I never. Shut up.”

“Truer words.”

But he does shut up, for a little while, and they watch together in peace. The rise and fall of his chest is a reassuring presence at Bucky’s back. Occasionally, he pokes at Bucky’s neck with his nose or chin. Either trying to be a nuisance or just unable to settle—it’s not clear.

He pokes at him with his chin more purposefully in response to a shot of the seductive crying woman. “She kind of looks like you.”

“Oh yeah? Is it my high cheekbones or my glittery leotard that makes you say so?”

“Long silver gloves. Just pull one on your right arm and you’ll match.”

Bucky moves his arm upward to drum at the back of Steve’s hand on his stomach with silver fingers. “Sure. Next time anyone’s got questions about my arm? Oh, me, I’m just ‘cosplaying.’ Out on the street.”

“Stand in Times Square and no one will ask questions. Gonna sew the rest of the costume?”

“It’s your sewing machine. You sew me the costume. What else do I keep you around for?”

“I thought it was because I know how to make you scream.”

“You know how to make an okay pot roast too, but that’s more a bug than a feature.”

Steve pinches his stomach through his t-shirt for that, and Bucky gasps. Steve doesn’t let go immediately, stretching out the pain, saying, “Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s me who keeps _you_ around,” as he narrows Bucky’s world to a burning pinprick.

When he does stop, Bucky mutters, “More please?”

Steve kisses the back of his head and pinches another spot, twisting, and Bucky says, “ _Oh_ ,” and he’s starting to get hard, and Steve pinches him a third time as the screen shows a close-up of the crying woman’s face.

Steve says, “How invested are you in watching this?” Squeezing and pulling Bucky’s stomach between his knuckles now.  
  
“Told you I’ve seen it before.”

“Not an answer.”

“The clicker’s under your head.”

“That’s closer to an answer.”

“Your hand’s near my crotch. You tell me what the answer is.”

“No, because I’m ordering _you_ to tell me. So you might want to do that before I have to address this backtalk.”

At that, Bucky’s heart feels like bubblegum. Affection spreads gooey and sugary inside his chest. He cranes his neck to meet Steve’s eyes and smiles at him, wide. “If you’re saying you doin’ something to me’s on the table, then no, I’m not all that invested in the show.”

Steve’s sleepy-eyed, his lips parted, his leg clamping down harder over Bucky’s calves. He rescues the clicker from under his own head and the screen goes black. Grateful, Bucky nudges at Steve’s outstretched arm with the top of his skull.

Steve rests his chin on Bucky’s cheek. He says, “You know how much I want to do you?”

“A million? No, I’m changing my answer to three and a half. Is this the metric system?”

“It was rhetorical, idiot. How could you know? You don’t know anything, do you?”

“Do I? I wouldn’t know.”

“Better,” Steve says, and massages Bucky’s right upper arm with his hand, firm up-and-down strokes. Then he releases Bucky’s legs from his hold. And he shoves him off of the couch.

Bucky rolls as he lands, and ends up on his back. Peering up at Steve, who’s leaning over the edge of the couch like Bucky’s deep at the bottom of a well and in need of rescue.  It makes him want to curl up in a ball, to be well-sized, to look like he can’t survive alone and needs to be given rope-burn climbing his way up to an impatient hero.

So it takes effort to keep himself spread out for Steve, hands at his sides, his breath notably heavier. Good effort, making him conscious of all the soft surfaces of his body. Vulnerable beneath his clothes, which are nothing. No leather, no straps, no Kevlar, no padding. Not even the number of layers he’d be wearing if they were still back home, dressing themselves up like real people instead of how people of the future dress. Here, it’s like they’re dolls. Like the point is to make it quick and easy.

In his t-shirt, his underwear, his socks and jeans—He might as well be wrapped in tissue paper for Steve to tear through.

Steve crawls his way off the couch, spidery and purposeful. Picks his way over Bucky’s waiting body and sits down beside him, one leg stretched out and the other bent in. He looks down and pulls on the front of Bucky’s t-shirt. “C’mere.”

Shirt still in Steve’s grip, Bucky goes. Kneels up to straddle Steve’s thighs. He knows not to assume he’s allowed to rest his weight there.

In a slow stretch, Steve shifts his own weight to his left arm, hand flat on the floor behind him. This straightens his spine, and he lifts his chin, examining Bucky, who feels unmoored. Like a gust of wind could bang open their apartment door and knock him right off of Steve. Take him away.

Then Steve loops his other arm around the back of Bucky’s neck, drawing him closer. Bucky sags forward, and Steve kisses him on the forehead. Scratches at his scalp. Says, “It is a million things, by the way. That I want to do to you. But what—” The scratching turns into a smack to the parietal bone—“am I going to do right now?”  

Bucky licks his lips. “Can I make a suggestion?”

Steve stops hanging around Bucky’s neck, instead lounging with both hands flat on the floor behind him. Examining him more dispassionately. He sighs. “I suppose you _can_ make it. If you _can_ string more than two words together.”

“ _May_ I make a suggestion?”

“You may, but again. If you can string two—”

“Steve.”

Steve’s hand flies out to grab Bucky’s face. Presses one cheek between his back teeth and forces the other one up with his thumb, obscuring Bucky’s vision on that side. Bucky examines the bulging, smooth inside of the flesh between his teeth with his tongue. His breath is shallow around the partial obstruction of Steve’s palm.

Steve says, “Don’t interrupt me.” Bucky tries to nod, and Steve increases the pressure on his face. “Nope. I need you to blink once for yes. And blink twice for, ‘I’m going to continue being an impudent brat.’”

That’s easy. That’s one blink. Steve’s hand leaves his face. “Now where were we?”

“I had a suggestion.”

“And?”

“I saw your tool box by the door.”

Steve’s grinning when he asks, “And?” this time.

“And. Well. I’m getting run-down in my old age, aren’t I? I bet I could use some work.” 

“You know what? That’s shockingly perceptive.” Steve flips them so he can be on top, and he climbs off of Bucky’s sprawled body. Motions at the floor. “Stay.”

Bucky stays perfectly still, and listens to Steve in the hallway. His body’s taut and thrumming. Blood pulses to his groin, and he feels like more of him is pelvis than anything else. He’s an assemblage of dick and balls and hips and ass for Steve to toy with, and the rest is incidental.  

He wants to turn his head and rub his cheek against the floor, recently swept clean, mopped clean, kept pretty and smooth. But he’s staying still for Steve.

And then Steve’s crouching next to him, setting the tool box down, and saying, “Up, come on. Sit up against the couch.”

Bucky crab-walks himself to sitting with his back sinking into the cushions. Knees pulled up, and his hands in the hidden valley of his lap. Steve’s got the tool box open, and he’s rummaging in it. Bucky watches him, tense with not knowing what he’ll pull out. It was just a flash of an idea, a swarm of unrealistic images of Steve hammering a nail into his nostril like he’s a sideshow freak, or pulling out a tooth with the pliers.

A corner of Steve’s mouth turns up as he studies the box’s contents, and he laughs to himself. Bucky laughs too, and when Steve looks at him, pokes his tongue into his cheek and raises his eyebrows. Steve frowns, scolding, but it’s undermined by how he goes right back to smiling.

“What’s the hold-up?” Bucky asks. “Nothing good in there?”

“The hold-up is that I’m steeling myself for having to touch you without gloves. What, you think I use these and never consider how they’d come in handy for keeping you in line? My interests are pretty limited.”

“What, torturing me and—?”

“Torturing you more.” He bobs his head to the side. “And light sculptures, recently.”

“What a guy.”

“Shush now.”

Steve kneels over him and slaps him across the face, left and then right, raising a sting on his cheeks and making his trapped dick throb. Bucky looks at Steve with wide eyes, and Steve pushes his head back with a hand to the forehead, and pulls his mouth open with two fingers on his bottom row of teeth.

He’s got the level in his other hand, and he stands it between Bucky’s teeth like a bit gag. The stretch is uncomfortable, and the hard plastic unforgiving. Like gnawing on rocks. It could wear him away. His breath whistles through the holes in the thing. The strain draws shivering lines down from his cheekbones to his jaw.

Steve says, “Huh. What a handy gadget for keeping track of you.”

Bucky makes a high _Oom?_ He sounds how his Pac-Man machine would if it worked.  

“Just think about it.” Steve sets his hands on either side of Bucky’s face, fingers pointed toward his ears, thumbs beneath his chin. Adjusts him in tiny moves, side-to-side and up, eyes fixed on the center of the level, before nodding and taking his hands away. “Now I know you’re even. And I’ll know if you move.”

What happens when Bucky moves remains unspoken.

Stillness and patience were drilled into him long ago. Sinking into being a fixture of his environment, a tree branch, a shadow, a deadly shot. That’s simple. But no one in a sniper’s nest ever pinched and poked and prodded him. Or looked at him with endless, beautiful greed, like quicksand that’ll suck him in whether he struggles or not.

The kit’s got an extensive collection of various screwdriver tips. Where Bucky can see him without moving, Steve pops them all out of their holders. “Oh. I get it,” Steve says as he works. “You asked for this for the pun.”

Bucky does his best to furrow his brow without moving the rest of his face. If he fails, Steve doesn’t say anything. “You want me to _screw_ you.” He holds up a flathead. “Not very original, Buck. But it’s not like I expect you to be clever. That’d be a world.” He abandons the screwdriver tips to flick the bridge of Bucky’s nose with his index finger, a sudden and glancing zing off the bone that comes close to the corner of his eye.

His head careens back, and his dick throbs with the same there-and-gone sharpness of the impact.

“Dammit, Bucky” Steve says. “I know I told you to stay still.” He straightens Bucky’s head by making a pigtail for a handle. Practical and mostly painless. “I want—” He flicks him in the same place—“the bubble—”and again, leaving a scratch—“in the middle.” This time on the bulb of Bucky’s nose, like he’s scolding a puppy. Each time, Bucky’s head jerks out of place; his whole body jolts with lust and surprise, and each time, Steve tugs him back to where he’s supposed to be.

The corner of his eye, near where Steve’s flicked him, is damp. Silent laughter goes through Steve in waves, and Bucky starts laughing too, but he has to choke it back when, with how his mouth’s pried open, it causes him to gag. He can feel the undulations of his throat. And he can’t calm them down until after a wet, froglike croak’s slipped past his lips and he’s blinking back tears.

Steve recoils. “Fuck, you’re vile.” Then he adjusts Bucky a little more, and kisses his eyebrow. “Awful fucking creature from the Black Slutgoon—Don’t you dare fucking laugh at that. You’re the one who made me watch it.” The effort of not laughing holds Bucky’s abs and chest tight, his breath shallow through his nose. “You’re going to stay still. I won’t say it again.”

His tongue feels exposed in his cavernous mouth. He gives one blink for yes.

Steve lifts Bucky’s right arm up and toward himself. Kneads at the soft, inner flesh toward his shoulder, and at the muscles, with more and more strength until Bucky’s got deep, sore circles that feel like bruises when Steve goes over them again. A slim set of muscles in his back quiver, but his head doesn’t.

“Okay,” Steve says. “That’s enough fun.” And he tightens his hold on Bucky’s wrist, and Bucky tracks him with his eyes as he takes a flat screwdriver head and pushes it into Bucky’s upper arm. Twists, like he really is screwing something in, where he’s meaty and sensitive. The pain’s harsh and precise. It pierces straight through him. The plastic of the level will probably be gouged from his teeth when Steve’s done.

If he ever is. He keeps lifting and shifting the bit of metal to find places that don’t hurt yet, and that’s just the first one.

The next screwdriver head he twists into Bucky’s arm covers a wider surface area, and the pain feels more insistent. Like a bone bruise. Like a hammer. When Bucky moans, his voice feathers at the edges, almost echoes against the level. And Steve looks up from what he’s doing and says, “Huh. That’s odd.” He taps the side of Bucky’s face, which is, it turns out, not where it’s supposed to be, and repositions him. “Could have sworn I put that level on a flat surface.”

Bucky moans at him again, and Steve pretends to ignore him, but moves the screwdriver head to just shy of his armpit, and gives it a particularly cruel, deep twist that makes his hips rock up and his head rocket back.

Steve gives him a pissy look, like Bucky forgot to fill the ice cube trays. He drops the screwdriver bit to the floor, and untucks some hair from behind Bucky’s ear only to re-tuck it. He takes him by the shoulders and rotates him so nothing’s at Bucky’s back anymore.  

“I gave you one thing to do,” he says. “Didn’t I?” Bucky blinks once for yes. “That’s right. It was to stay. Still. And yet you just keep disappointing me.” He yanks the level out of Bucky’s mouth, and while the absence still feels unreal, smacks him in the ear with it.  Bucky winces at the loud pop, and keeps his mouth open in case that’s what Steve wants.

He feels like he’s got no jawbone at all. Ghostly. Like anything could slide right in and down his throat with no resistance.

But Steve puts the level under his chin and uses it to nudge him closed. Then to lead him in lying back on the floor. He runs it up and down Bucky’s throat, and it stutters over bone, over his Adam’s apple. Bucky finds himself mouthing noises in response, needing who the hell knows what.

Steve laughs. “You look like a fucking fish. I oughta keep you in an aquarium. Think you could stay out of trouble in there?”

“I always stay out of trouble. I’m very mild-mannered.”

“Prove it and maybe I’ll let you have some aquarium rocks.”  

“Can I earn a fake plant?”

“Am I made of money? You’ll _maybe_ get your rocks, and you’ll be happy with them.”

“I will be, won’t I? Sorry for arguing.”

“That’s okay. I already knew you were a recalcitrant piece of shit.”

“Yeah. But I want to be good for you.” He sounds so earnest that he surprises himself. Even though he means it; of course he means it, but there’s no showmanship in his voice at all. He’s just raw.

Steve’s eyes get narrow and warm. He looks at Bucky the same way he looks at a good meal. Softly, he says, “I don’t care what the fuck you want, Buck,” and kisses the bridge of his nose. And pinches Bucky’s nostrils closed between knuckle and thumb. “Being good for me is a requirement, not something for you to enjoy. You’ll eat your gruel without any bitching.”

His hand comes up to cover Bucky’s mouth, so now all of his air is gone. Bucky’s abdominal muscles and eyelids flutter, and he tightens his shoulders and chest against the possibility of greying out. He tries not to suck in or blow out on Steve’s palm, but makes a little involuntarily _glub_ noise.

Steve nods and lets him breathe again, mouth and nose both.

Bucky says, “Thank you,” for all of it. “I’ll eat my gruel.”

“That’s right. And I don’t care if you throw it up. You’re eating the vomit.”

He whimpers. “Jesus, Steve.”

Steve laughs. “Aw, does someone not like that?”

“Honestly? Someone isn’t sure how he feels.”

Steve strokes Bucky’s left arm, and grabs another screwdriver head. He sets about forcing sweet bruisey spots deep through Bucky’s flesh. Leaving him moaning, whining with the more brutal twists. His hips move in small circles, and every time Steve finds a new patch of skin, it takes all his willpower not to jerk his arm. Closer, or farther, or to cover his face to hide how needy he must look. Biting and licking at his own lips, getting his face wet, fixated on Steve’s own expression of fixation.

It’s like Bucky’s not even here. Like Steve’s meditating, even as he mutters, between switches to other shapes and sizes, “Just need to hurt you a little more,” and, “Nothing’s enough for you, is it?” while Bucky whispers back, “Okay,” and “No, yeah,” and, “Screw me, please _,_ Steve,” with a hiccupping laugh _._

He glances away from Steve’s strong eyebrows and ruffled hair to watch what’s being done to him. All over, his skin’s mottled red and pink, and he swears his cephalic vein pops out a darker green than usual. Star-shaped indentations litter his arm like bite marks. And as Steve goes at him with another, smaller flathead, needle-harsh, he can see the skin growing roughed-up and white. And other patches where it already is.

He says, “Those are some real artistic sensibilities you got there.”

Steve smirks and lowers his head over his work, twisting more insistently so Bucky yelps. “Well, the thing is, Buck, I can’t have anyone knowing what a poor quality canvas I’m using. I have to work twice as hard to make you look pretty as I would with someone else.”

Bucky grunts and lifts his hips off the ground, desperate for more friction than his own jeans. “Thank god for me that you love a challenge.”

“Thanks, God.”

“Sincerely, James B. Barnes. Wait, did you just do something because I told you t—Fuck!” The crook of his elbow smarts where Steve’s stabbed him.

“It was a fluke. Order me around again and see what happens. Remember, I still have to punish you for not staying still.”

“Heaven forfend I forget.”

“You don’t sound very apologetic.”  
  
“I am, Steve. I wanted to stay still for you. Please teach me a lesson.”

“Now how do you think I should do that?”

The screwdriver head caresses his bicep. “Oh, put me in the stocks in the town square, probably.”

“Is that right? And let anyone who walks by give you a beating? Or fuck open your hole until you’re stuck loose and ready?”

“Sure. Sounds like a workable plan. You’ve got the mayor on speed-dial, right?”

“No. Because I don’t see how that would punish anyone but me. After all,” he whispers, before biting Bucky’s chin so that Bucky’s body tremors, shoving itself up off the ground, head tilting back, going with the caught feeling, “you’re _my_ property, God help me. Not the town’s. And if anyone’s gonna give you a beating, it’s me.”

Bucky stares at him adoringly, his mouth squirming around. He takes a deep breath. “That’s so sweet.” Then, “Wait, I mean, not to complain, but are you gonna beat me with the fucking level? ‘Cause I don’t know how much more that thing can take after my teeth.”

“You’ve got a point,” Steve says shoving three fingers into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky sucks, and Steve removes them with a _pop_. “That’s quite the strong mouth you’ve got on you. Strange how you’re a weak, sad little kitten everywhere else.”

“Yeah, well. That’s mad scientists for ya.”     

“They’re always giving me such fun gifts.”

“You ever think about giving back? You could show ‘em their own intestines. I know they like that.”

Steve puts a steadying hand in the middle of his chest. He leans in so his eyes and Bucky’s are a couple inches apart. Bucky struggles not to close his. “Is that what we’re talking about right now? If you need to—”

Because Bucky _doesn’t_ talk about what he did while he was missing. But the idea is to keep not talking about it forever, except for when it slips out as a joke. Steve’s already got enough blood and bullshit in his head.

Bucky says, “Yeah, no, not right now. Seriously. It doesn’t matter. Sorry for ruining the mood.” He gives Steve an apologetic kiss on the cheek.

Steve pinches Bucky’s lower lip and looks very serious. “Nothing’s ruined.” He sits up. “Except my day, from having to look at this fucking Cubist disaster. I mean, I know better than anyone how hard it is to not wanna rearrange your face, but did someone really have to go and do it _literally_?”

“I can only imagine how much you’re suffering.”

“Actually—” Steve goes into the kit and takes out a metal putty knife. At its widest, it’s about the size of Steve’s forearm in a different life, and then it narrows into a rubberized handle. “That’s not true. That fucked up mug can ruin _your_ day too.”

He brings the putty knife to hover over Bucky’s face like a hand mirror. The surface barely blurs his reflection, his flushed cheeks and widened eyes. He makes an exaggerated face of disgust at himself.

“God, I’m really sorry, Steve. I didn’t know this was what you were living with.”

Steve nods. He flattens Bucky’s nose against the widest part of the knife’s cool surface, obscuring his mouth in a forced kiss where it tapers, the handle jutting into his chin. “So. That’s _repeatedly_ being visible in my presence, ordering me to thank God for you, and not staying still when I told you. I think you have a lot to make up for.”

“I really do,” Bucky says, muffled by the metal. “I’m sorry.”

Steve slides the knife down, slow as melting butter, and when it’s almost off Bucky’s face, abruptly scrapes it back up. Uses the thin, flat edge to tuck Bucky’s upper lip between his own teeth, then continues, jabbing at the skin above his mouth, threatening a cut that won’t come. Leaving him raw.

Bucky kisses the knife, and Steve stops tormenting him, switches to throwing it from hand to hand.

“Anyway,” he says, “give me your right hand. Turned toward the ceiling.”

Bucky raises it in offering, and Steve smacks the knife down on his palm like a nun with a ruler. The sting is instant, and dispersed, and the hit makes the kind of high ringing sound he only would have expected from the knife meeting his other hand. Steve looks him in the eye and smacks him again. Bucky keeps his arm up, bends his fingers back to pull his skin taut and make it sting more with the third smack, third ring, third instance of Steve quirking his mouth at him along with the impact.

Steve does it twice more and then—“There, there.” He pats Bucky’s warmed palm. Guides Bucky’s arm back down to the floor.

“Do I do an Our Father now?”

“No.” Steve’s fingers circle the wrist of Bucky’s punished hand. Grinding at the bones. “I’m not nearly done with you. What, you thought that was it? Are you joking?”

“I mean, I hoped not, but it’s not about what I want.”   

“It’s good that you know that.” He releases Bucky’s wrist, leaving it aching, and presses the edge of the knife into Bucky’s thigh, a thin, biting line. It’s like Steve’s stuck a sword straight through him and pinned him to the floor, his to fuck with for as long as he likes. But Steve just says, “Pull your pants down.”

Bucky watches the knife on his thigh as he pops the button open on his jeans and draws the zipper down. He gets one pants leg wiggled to mid-thigh, and half of his boxers awkwardly bunched down too. To pull them off on the right side, where Steve’s pinning him, he has to curl upward for leverage. He imagines himself as a pill bug; Steve would poke him; he’d curl up. A cute pet. A cute party trick.  

Once his jeans and boxers are suitably out of the way, the putty knife is abandoned on the floor. Steve’s hands are on Bucky’s biceps, jerking his head and torso up off the ground. He’s careful to handle the left arm more roughly than the right, making sure the sensors will sufficiently register the treatment. Bucky hangs there like a ragdoll, angled back, grinning at Steve, feeling feral with want. Like his canine teeth are lengthening and sharpening, like he’s becoming a wolf for Steve to tame.

Steve says, “Come on. You need this,” punctuating the words with a loud grinding slide of teeth.

“When don’t I?”

And Steve’s twisting him, forcing him around onto his knees, with his dick and hips and stomach pressed up against the couch cushions, elbows and arms supporting him, face hidden in the couch’s back. Some of the screwdriver bits are caught under his knees like dried rice, biting him through the denim.

Steve says, “God knows the answer’s never. Isn’t it sad I’ve got better things to do with my time than correct you all day?”

“Tragic.” His voice is muffled. “Maybe you should put me in a shock collar. Set up an electric fence.”

That makes Steve gather Bucky’s shirt in his fist, twisting the fabric, pulling it up his spine, above his hips. Steve leans forward, resting his forehead on the back of Bucky’s neck. Throaty, he says, “Be good for about five minutes and I’ll see about finding one to fit you.”

“I can do that.”

“Don’t talk yourself up.” Steve cuffs him on the back of the head, so his face gets squished against the couch more. “It’s not done in polite society.”

“Sorry.” He smiles.

“Ugh. Now where was I?”

“Making me regret my transgressions against you?”

“Aw, you _can_ pay attention.” He takes a moment to claw at the skin he revealed when he pushed up Bucky’s shirt, so Bucky hisses and arches his back and melts into the cushions.

“You’re gonna get off rubbing yourself on the couch while I hurt you.”

“Thought this was punishment.”

“It is. And as punishment, I could make you lick the upholstery as is, but it’s not the same as having you clean your own filth.”

“Oh, of course.”

“And it’s funny to watch you hump the furniture. That’s my reward for spending time teaching you.”

“Oh, okay, then. You deserve that.”

The knife comes to rest, cool from being kept near the door, against the curve of his ass. Steve says, “You don’t say what I deserve. _I_ say what I deserve, and what you deserve. That’s how this works.”

He pushes in with the knife, flattening Bucky’s cheek with it, and Bucky wants to squirm but only says, “Thanks for explaining, Steve” and then Steve hits him.

At first, it’s only a loud thwack and the concrete fact of touch; the knife is there and it’s real and Bucky’s a sturdy target. He’s satisfyingly loud when you beat him. That’s it _._

But soon the smacked skin of his ass begins to burn. A pain that spreads like wildfire, and he spreads his legs in response. The hits build on one another, even as Steve varies where they land, quickly covering his entire ass. With each smack, he can feel the exact shape of the knife like a brand, but the sting bleeds past the edges.

He’s a mess of hurting, of buzzing blood, with Steve’s hand firm on the small of his back, and instinct tells him that being good means staying still, but Steve wants him to get off like this, so he lets the force of the knife jump his hips forward when it lands. The upholstery is an easy slide beneath him, but the cushions are overstuffed; it’s like rutting against another body. Pleasure tumbles through him with each slap from the metal. And again right after—like jumping two stairs at a time—with each stroke of his dick along the couch.

And then Steve takes it upon himself to focus only on Bucky’s thighs. Leaving him hot and crawling and needy but unbalanced, the impact rougher on the tensed muscle at the back. Startling where his thigh and ass meet, and when the knife sweeps up to slap him there, he can feel his ass bounce, and he knows that’s what makes Steve laugh under his breath.

Bucky’s dick spurts wetness against his stomach, and it must smear onto the upholstery, must be ruining the screen-printed blue flowers.  

“Dear god, Steve, fucking _please._ Christ.” He moans between words, around words. Hears himself breaking off into an embarrassing clusters of wailing squeaks as Steve lays a series of smacks down high up on the inside of his thigh, following them with his nails.

Steve stops. The knife reappears in front of Bucky’s face. Warm now, from paddling him. Unsure of what’s expected, he kisses it again, and that must be right, because Steve doesn’t make him stop. Instead he claws at Bucky’s burning right thigh and the swell of his ass, using his nails to lift the flesh there, stretching the skin, before biting him.

Bucky giggles a groan into the knife and says, “ _Steve_ , please,” and Steve’s hand whips out against the center of his ass, a sharp, clear hit that would make his knees weak if he weren’t already boneless.

Steve says, “See, here’s my problem. You could at least _try_ to shut the fuck up.”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

“Didn’t you want to be put in the stocks? You really think anyone would have tolerated you squealing like this in the town square? They’d put that whiny mouth to use, make sure you didn’t bother all the people just trying to buy their groceries.”

“Can I—” _ask if they’re fucking my mouth with their groceries?_

“No _._ Are you going to try to shut up or not?”

Bucky nods, exaggerating the motion, the couch a soft friction. For emphasis, he raises his left hand in the air in the symbol for _OK._

“There we go.” Steve lets him stop kissing the knife. Brings it back to rub against his ass. “Now was that so hard?”

Again the exaggerated nodding, and Steve laughs and smacks him with the knife, harsh and burning, reawakening his nerves. Bucky grunts, forcing his face into the couch, anything to stifle him if need be, and Steve says, “Yeah. What the fuck isn’t hard for you, huh?”

“Is that—” He angles his head so his mouth is free— “rhetorical?”

“No. I need to know what isn’t hard for you so you can stop wasting space. And don’t say ‘getting fucked’ just to get what you want. I know just fine you could lie there all day taking it.”

“Billiards. ’S easy. Could play in my sleep.”

 

 

 

There was a week-long stretch in 1939 when all Bucky could talk about when they were alone—beneath the patina of bills and train delays and rude customers and crossword puzzle clues—was Steve fucking him on a pool hall table. A bunch of other guys watching him, with their ties loosened and their cigarettes lit. Chalking up their cues with Bucky spread-eagle face-up in the middle of the table, Steve rubbing the blue chalk on his nipples, on his dick, stroking his flank and telling them, _you just hit him here enough times and he’ll break better than any fucking rack._

Steve screwing him open with a cue while tossing back drinks like he couldn’t be more bored. Steve offering the winners at other tables the chance to touch Bucky. To grope him or spank him or stick their dicks in him or try to force a billiard ball between his teeth.

Leaning against Bucky, scribbling in a notebook while he listened to this fantasy, Steve interjected once, “All right. Let’s take you down to Hudson Billiards and find a prime table for you,” and Bucky whimpered and hid his face against the top of Steve’s head. Swore he could feel himself blushing.

“What?” he remembers Steve asking. “Seriously, you say all that and now you’re mortified? The humble act’s over the top.”

And Bucky muttered against Steve’s wispy hair, “I’m always humbled by you, idiot.”

Steve said, “Yeah. Well.” He huffed out of his nose like a bull. “Fuck you too, you saint.”  

 

 

 

“Really?” Steve says, dragging the edge of the knife over Bucky’s sore ass so he shudders and winces. “You want to test that theory? Let’s say one night you go to sleep in your bed, and when you wake up, I’ve been using your unconscious body as a cue. Your face would be all bruised up from taking the brunt of it.”

The knife smacks down low on the inside of his left cheek, near his balls, and he thrusts his hips up, mindless need wracking his body.

“And let’s say I believed you, and so I put a lot of money on winning.” He smacks him again in the same place, thrusts him forward again, and Bucky whimpers, rubs his cheek on the couch, presses his open mouth against it. “If I don’t win, whose fault is that gonna be?”

The knife thunks to the floor. Steve’s hand smooths over Bucky’s ass, and he pushes forward, so Bucky’s face gets fully smashed, and his knees start to slide out from under him, and Bucky tries to say, “Mine,” but it’s just an ugly glob of sound.

Steve’s hand in his hair pulls his head up and back, sending an ache through his neck. His eyes sting with tears. He doesn’t need to be told; he repeats, “Mine,” clearly even though his voice is wrecked. “My fault.”  

Sweetly, Steve says, “Good, that’s right,” and Bucky closes his eyes, keening, as Steve tugs harder. “It’ll be your fault. I’ll be forced to have you suck on an eight ball and cane you with a real cue.”

Bucky’s hips continue in small jumps;  the way Steve has him now, there’s more pressure on the head of his cock than anything else, and everything he says comes out in a weak dribble of sound. He pictures himself as one of those magic eight balls they’ve got now, Steve shaking him every time he doesn’t like how Bucky answers his questions. He’s empty and desperate.

He says, “Steve. Are you gonna stick your screwdriver up my ass?”

_Don’t count on it. Doubtful. Outlook not so good._

“I don’t know. Do you think you deserve that?”

“Well, I don’t think _I_ get to pass judgment on that. What do I look like?”  
  
“You look like an old piece of carpet, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything. And you have been pretty good, now that I’ve dealt with your behavior. I don’t like to lie.” Bucky snorts. “But somehow just not good enough for me to stick my screwdriver up your asshole, no. I mean, come on, Buck. I’d only defile my tools for a _very_ good boy. Not ‘pretty good.’ I have standards”

Steve stops holding him by the hair. Bucky keeps his mouth off the couch when his head drops. “I’d clean it for you after, Steve. I’d clean it with my mouth, and then with bleach, and then my mouth again—”

“I’d fucking hope so. Look, here, I’ll be nice.” And then something presses sharply at the nape of Bucky’s neck. Rotates so he grunts. “You want it so bad? It’s right here. Just think about that while you get off. How easy it would be for to move it down and plunge it into you. It’s not even anywhere near enough. I don’t know who you’re trying to fool. If I were going to put something in this sloppy hole—”

His fingers jab between Bucky’s cheeks, against where he’s still tight and dry, and Bucky groans and bites his lip hard, like he’s trying to tear it off, thrusting against the couch and thinking about Steve forcing his way in—“I’d have to use my whole fist. At the very least.”

His fingers circle, and Bucky wills himself to relax and open for him, to show he’d let him in. “That’s fine, Steve. You can put your fist in me right now if you need to. I don’t mind.”

“Of course you don’t. I could stick a bazooka up here and you’d beg me for more. But what do I get out of that except a ruined bazooka? Maybe I should stick it down your throat instead, huh? Stand over you and see how far down I can plunge it.”

“Please. Steve, put a fucking bazooka in my guts. You can.”

“I know. I know, but Buck, come on. Do you really think you’re worth the effort?” And Steve thrusts a finger in dry, and Bucky startles and sobs at the roughness before clenching down around him. Letting his body shudder for Steve to enjoy. “See, it’s a lot of work to put things in you when you go out of your way to tighten up like this. I came here to fuck something, not plug a leaking dike.”

“That’s fucking. Homophobic. I’m telling everyone Captain America just called me—”

Steve smacks the handle of the screwdriver against the side of his face. The shock of it combined with the drag of his dick against the couch cushions is enough. As he comes, he hears over his own scattered whimpers, Steve laughing through the words, “I don’t know who the fuck told you that mouth was for making jokes.”

Bucky’s breath is ragged, but slowing back down, and he twists his head to nuzzle at his own right shoulder. Hums a couple notes, and feels the electricity draining from him, leaving him soft and sated.

Quieter, Steve says, “What’s it for, Bucky? Come on. Tell me what that mouth is for.”

He gets out, “For you to use, Steve,” though Steve’s name slurs into _Steef._

“Exactly,” Steve says. “Here, here.” He pulls Bucky backward, down onto the floor, gathering him in his arms. Bucky’s face floats a few inches above the cushions, and Steve wraps two fingers around his chin, directing his gaze down. He croons in Bucky’s ear. “See that? You made a mess there, didn’t you?”

“My deepest apologies.”

“It’s all right. I told you to. But you still have to clean it up for me, don’t you? You think you can be responsible and do it yourself, or am I going to need to rub your face in it?”

 Bucky lets himself relax against Steve’s solidity and mumbles, “Can’t be responsible.”

Steve sighs. “Jesus, when can you ever. You need my help?”

“Please, Steve.”

With a hushed laugh Steve takes his hand off of Bucky’s chin to slip it into his hair, palming his skull. He pushes him down so his mouth is over the largest splatter—there isn’t that much, really; a lot of it got on Bucky’s shirt—and Bucky sticks his tongue out and licks it up, then sucks at the fabric, not wanting to miss anything, even though Steve’ll probably clean it for real later.

The hand in his hair redirects him to a few other drops of come, and as he eats it all, Steve makes soothing circles on his scalp with his thumb. “There we go. Be a good little washcloth for me.”

A high noise tugs free of Bucky’s throat. He swallows all the come in his mouth, and laps at the still-wet patches of cushion. His eyes fall closed and he starts to lose himself in it, but Steve tugs on his hair and says, “You know, if you’re done, you can say so.”

Bucky stops licking and snickers. “Right. I’m done. It’s clean.”

“Like anything that’s had your mouth on it could ever be clean. But I appreciate you making some effort for once. Here.”

Steve reaches around to grab the cushion he was licking. He settles it on the floor next to them, and urges Bucky down so both their heads are pillowed where it’s damp and smells like come. Bucky says, “You’re a real pervert.”

“Stop slandering me.” He bites at Bucky’s neck, and they both spread their legs out, overlapping with each other at the ankles. Steve strokes Bucky’s chest with his left hand and stretches his right arm out under his own head. His jeans are reassuringly rough against Bucky’s still-exposed paddled skin.

Watching the motion of Steve’s hand on his sternum, Bucky asks, “So that’s how many now?”

“How many what?”

“Things you wanna do to me. It was a million. It’s nine-hundred ninety-nine-thousand nine-hundred-ninety-nine now?”

“I think I just did more than one thing to you.”

“All right. So it’s what, nine-hundred and ninety-nine-thousand and nine-hundred-ninety-six?”

“Actually—” Steve flops his right hand over Bucky’s forehead, his fingers reframing the world like the bars on a window—“while you were busy being a brainless, mewling mess, some of us thought of ten more things to do to you. It’s a constantly growing list.”

“Yeah, well. We might be around forever. Wouldn’t wanna run outta date night activities just ’cause Earth’s empty of water and we all live on the moon.”

“Oh, we’re ruling out gravity in the future? Then that’s another hundred things I wanna do.”

Bucky grins. He lifts his head so that Steve’s flopped hand touches his mouth, so that Steve can feel the shape of it. “Hell, you know what we should get? A trampoline. I can lie down on it while you jump and throw me all over the place.”

“Where the fuck are we sticking a trampoline?”

“On the moon, I mean. Keep up. It goes on the moon when we’re seven-thousand years old.”

Steve’s quiet for a while and uncovers Bucky’s forehead. Then he says, “Where the fuck did I find you?”

“By the tetherball. Why, though, I ask myself every day.”

“I guess I just had a feeling.” He brings his left hand up to Bucky’s lips. Bucky kisses the tip of his middle finger.

When Steve first found him by the tetherball, Bucky was crying, and he doesn’t remember the why of that either. He knows only a very specific set of whys: why love Steve; why annoy Steve; why let Steve annoy him; why pay his taxes; why read the newspaper; why buy fresh produce; why keep being alive every day, so many days that that they might end up living on the moon.  

 

 

 

They’re necking up against the wall by the television, Bucky’s wrists crossed behind his back. Background noise: The Weather Channel. Outside is a blizzard. Bucky wandered in and found Steve standing in the middle of the floor, watching and frowning, his favorite way to absorb new information. Bucky couldn’t help but go to him and sling his left arm around Steve’s shoulders and use his right hand to mess up Steve’s hair.

Steve turned to him, squinting and smiling, and said, “So what do you think you’re doing?” and messed Bucky’s hair up with both hands, furiously, like he was trying to pump him full of static electricity.

Bucky screamed and laughed and Steve muscled him over to the wall. “You gonna answer me?” he asked, between kissing Bucky open-mouthed and tugging on bits of his hair to make him wriggle.

With the wall at his back, Bucky said, “Just saying, ‘Hey!’” and pecked the corner of Steve’s mouth, and got bitten on the jaw, and sighed.

“So say, ‘Hey,’ like a good dog instead of putting your paws all over me.” Steve kissed his mouth again, and Bucky’s hands flew behind his back so he wouldn’t accidentally disobey.  

Now, Steve leaves Bucky’s mouth alone to kiss up his cheek, to grip his ear with his teeth and pull, to lick his eyebrow. Bucky squirms and bares his neck and pushes his chest out more, wanting. He clears his throat and says, “You dropped a receipt on the kitchen floor.”

“Did I?”

“You know you fucking did. That’s a lot of makeup to buy. For no reason.” 

“Is it? Huh. Thanks for enlightening me, Buck.”

“Please, Steve. I want you to be _intimate_ with me.” Steve snorts and starts sucking on Bucky’s neck. Through a moan, Bucky adds, “I want you to hold my face still and be _tender_ , please.”

Steve stops working on Bucky’s neck. Covers half of Bucky’s face with one of his hands, letting him feel the fluttering of his own eyelashes against a calloused palm. “What the hell are you talking about over there?”

“Come on, Steve. Please. There’s a snow storm. It’s Christmas—”

“It’s November.”

“—and I want to make your dreams come true.”

“Aren’t you sweet?”

Bucky growls at him, and Steve curls his fingers in to pull his cheek upward like clay. Bucky’s upper lip obscures one nostril, and now he can _hear_ his own eyelashes too, skittering over the knuckle of Steve’s little finger.

“Don’t you want me to be nicer to look at?” He’s technically intelligible, but skirting the edge of gibberish without the full use of his mouth.

Steve stares at the ceiling and sucks air in through his teeth. “I want a lot of things. But I guess this’ll have to do. Come on, ugly.”

They’re doing this in Bucky’s room, though Bucky’s finds himself longing for a train compartment, or the narrow curtained shadows of a backstage. To give Steve exactly what he wants, what he wanted. Bucky would dress up in a chorus girl outfit if that was what he wanted. He would steal his blue jacket from the Smithsonian, knowing Steve had dreamed of doing this to him in the war.

But Steve doesn’t look like he’s missing out on anything. Smiling with teeth and almost bouncing, he shoves Bucky backward through the doorway.

Bucky says, “Where’s the vanity?” and Steve shoves him again. Bucky gifts him an exaggerated wind-milling of his arms, and wobbles around like he’s drunk.

“Last time I checked, you’ve got more than enough of that.” Steve stalks toward Bucky’s stumbling body. “But I hate to tell you, sweetheart, you’re the only one who thinks this thing’s worth a dime.” He gestures at Bucky’s face, and then at his whole body, and then finally, he pounces. Pushes down on Bucky’s shoulders so he falls to his knees in front of the table-bed.

“You know I’m giving it away for free here.” He kisses Steve’s thigh, then his dangling hand, and Steve backhands him in the mouth, more a kiss than a reprimand. Just a reminder that his face is Steve’s for smacking. That all of Bucky is his to treat as he pleases.

Steve says “Now, you know that’s a lie. You’re sucking me dry of time and attention. That sound like something free?”

“Nah, you’re right. I’m a needy fuck.”

Steve smooths a hand over Bucky’s hair. “That’s right. A demanding little nightmare slut, huh? But you’re gonna scoot back so you’re up against the table leg. Got it?”

Bucky salutes, and moves where Steve wants him, the rounded wooden leg a hard presence at his back.

Steve says, “Good enough, I guess. Stay. Wait,” and disappears down the hall to his bedroom.  

He’s back in a minute, with a Rite-Aid bag and a looped-up bike lock dangling from his hands. There are keys in his palm too, which jingle when he drops everything.

Bucky lifts his head to greet him, grinning, then goes to move his hands behind his back, but Steve stops him, bringing his sneaker down on Bucky’s left hand while it’s still on his thigh. Pinning him. And Bucky places his wandering right hand flat on his thigh too. His reward is Steve twisting his shoe like he’s trying to grind Bucky’s left hand down into the dirt. The unsettling urgency of _too much pressure detected_ , and a complaining whirring.

Steve steps off. Kicks at Bucky’s ribs as he goes. Only hard enough to sing like a short-lived bruise, and to make him need more. Bucky says, “What, not gonna kick me in the mouth too?” and shows his teeth. It looks for a second like Steve’s gonna punch him in the mouth instead, but he feints, and laughs at Bucky’s flinch, before kneeling on the floor with him and picking up the bike lock.

“You see this tag?” He holds the flap of fabric on the lock close to Bucky’s face. _Kryptonite._ “Just to make sure you can’t break free. That should keep you nice and helpless for me.”

“You’re s’posed to be the fucking Superman here.”

“Not today. Today I’m Lois Lane.”

“Can’t you just be Steve?”

“I’m always just Steve.”

“Yeah.” Bucky smiles at him, goofy and out of control. He winks. “You are.”

Steve loops the sinuous bit of the lock around Bucky’s neck. Not tight as a collar, but almost there. The crisscrossed ends come together behind the table leg. To secure them, Steve picks up the clunky metal U and the keys, and he locks the whole contraption in place.

“Tug,” he says, and Bucky does, but the circle holds firm. When he ducks his head and sticks out his tongue, he can wiggle the tip down inside the loop. Nothing else can slip through. It’s just small enough.

“Looks like I’m stuck here.”

“That’s right. As long as I want you. Not that I think you were in danger of being stolen. Not a fucking rusted-out thing like you. But still. A strong breeze and you might roll away.”

“Well, you should take my tires off.” He grins. “And install a kickstand on me.” The fast scrape of Steve’s nails down Bucky’s right forearm, leaving three burning stripes in their wake. Bucky forces himself to jerk upward instead of forward, since he might choke himself on the bike lock that way.

“Bicycles don’t get a say in their alterations. You’re not here to get your tires removed. You’re here to get a paint job so I don’t have to be embarrassed to be seen walking you through the street.”  

And Christ, he gets dizzy with the idea that they could just head outside to the grocery store or to a museum and both spend the whole time thinking of it as Steve walking Bucky through the street. Bucky helplessly on display not because of anything they’re doing differently than any other couple out walking, but because of something inherent in what he is.

“Am I going to do your makeup too?”

“No. You’re not good enough to be trusted with my face.”

“Don’t want me wrecking Mount Rushmore?”

“Shut the fuck up. Fine, if that’s how you want to think about it. But this—” His fingertips skate down Bucky’s cheek, swirling over his chin and poking at the dent there—“This has got nowhere to go but up. This is all mine to improve.”

Bucky takes in the objects Steve’s set in front of him on the floor. A small glass pot, a lipstick, an eyeshadow palette, a large, fluffy brush and a fat pencil and a tube of what he thinks is mascara. “Steve.”

“Yeah?

“Why is all of it purple?”

“Why do you think?”

“You’re colorblind again?” And he smiles and hopes Steve’ll hit him, but what Steve does is smile back, looking impossibly fond.

“You know what I love about asking you questions? The answers are always much stupider than anything I can imagine.”

“Can you put that in writing?”

“I’ll get a trophy made. ‘Stupidest imagination in all of New York.’”

Bucky grins. “I’d love it. You gonna build me a trophy case, handyman?”

“What, you’re that weak and lazy, you can’t carry it around with you? You don’t wanna show off to everyone the one thing you’ve ever fucking accomplished?”

“You’re really asking the hard questions today.”

“Every question’s hard for you, dear.” He slips a knuckle through Bucky’s parted lips to knock against his teeth twice, and Bucky opens the door for him, sucking on his bent finger leisurely, like it’s a lollipop. “Two plus two?”

He pulls his finger out so Bucky can answer, “Golly, I don’t know. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

“All right. Out of the goodness of my heart—” He puts his hand up under Bucky’s t-shirt and bites his nails into his left nipple, twisting before he releases, and Bucky’s mouth falls open, a thin cry tumbling off his tongue as he lurches and his neck hits the barrier of the lock. “One.” Steve lets his voice trail off and nods at Bucky meaningfully.

“What? Oh. One?”

“Exactly.” And he grabs and twists the right nipple. “Two.”

“T-Two.”

After doing the same to the left nipple again, so that Bucky’s eyes are wet when he blinks and he’s left hot and weighed down with how the pain flies arrow-slender through him and then leaves, Steve says, “One,” and looks at Bucky, who repeats, “One.”

Steve slaps him across the face. Caught off guard, Bucky lets his head turn with the impact instead of pushing back into it, and he almost reaches up to touch his warmed cheek. But instead he meets Steve’s eye and frowns. “What’d I do?”

“Bucky.” And now Steve’s holding both of Bucky’s hands in both his own hands, like a prayer circle. “I’m teaching you math, remember? So I have to say, ‘One. Two. One. Two,’ so you understand that it’s two plus two, right?” Bucky nods. “But you should be counting straight through. One, two—” He inclines his head.

“Three. Sorry. It was three.”

“It was three. And so on. And that’s how we’re going to get to the answer together. Is that simple enough for you?”

“Yes. I can do that.” He smiles. “Thanks for pandering to me like this.”

“Well, we’ll see. I’m gonna need to start over though, so you don’t get too confused.”

“That’s real thoughtful of you, Steve. You’re a stand-up guy.”

Steve says, “No, dumbass, I’m sitting,” but he kisses each of Bucky’s hands before he drops them.

And then he starts over, wrenching at Bucky’s nipples, making him repeat, shaky-voiced, _one_ and _two_ , the pain still fleeting but stronger now. More like sticking his finger in an electrical socket. Steve’s thumb brushes the hard ache of his left nipple, and that isn’t a number, only something to make him shiver.

But it transforms into twisting, into a shock of pain and a soft shout and Steve talking him through it, sweet-voiced, “One,” and Bucky answering, “Three.” Steve’s mouth curls up, proud, and he sweeps his thumb over Bucky’s nipple again, this time a reward.

He says, “Look at you, not fucking something up,” and twists Bucky’s right nipple, sudden and extreme like he’s trying to screw off a bottle cap and Bucky screams, jerking to the side as if to curl protectively over his own ribs. But the bike lock keeps him more or less in place, the metal knocking against the table leg, and Steve says, “Two.”

Bucky whispers, “Four, Steve. It’s four. Two plus two is four.” There are tears in his eyes. One slips free and rolls down his cheek.

“Thank god.” Steve puts his hands on either side of Bucky’s face, like a picture frame. “I thought we might be here all night. I guess even a stopped clock can do math as long as someone tortures its nipples.”

“You know, that phrase never made sense to me before.”  He licks at the curve where Steve’s thumb and palm meet. Gives him a kiss there.

Steve responds by dragging Bucky’s skin down tight over his cheekbones, leaving him with tension behind his eyes, his gaze milkier. Every blink feels like an event, and his mouth is stuck in a scowl, pinned by the heels of Steve’s hands. Bucky licks him more anyway, and Steve wrinkles his nose. Un-frames Bucky’s face.

He plucks at both of Bucky’s nipples through his t-shirt, pull and release. The spring on a pin ball machine. And Bucky whimpers, and blinks hard. The pain stays now, throbbing. A round, encompassing sensitivity, exposure—It’s like having an open wound. Steve can hurt him while hardly trying.

Steve’s finger hovers in front of Bucky’s eye now, and Bucky lowers his lids, letting Steve tap him there. Steve stops. Bucky opens. Steve says, “I was thinking of getting one of those water bottle backpacks.”

“Yeah, what for?”

“I was thinking that every time you get teary like this, I should collect the product. Shouldn’t be too long before that’s a whole water bottle backpack full of fucktoy tears.”

“What, you wanna go on a hike and drink my tears? That’s a good way to drop dead, man. You need real fluids.”

“No, the backpack’s for you. I make you keep it on you at all times. And I’d text you when it’s time to rehydrate. Just so you don’t forget what you are for me.”

“I wouldn’t forget.”

“Sure. Can’t remember your own fucking phone number or your table manners, but—” He swipes his thumb over Bucky’s mouth, like flipping pages, so his lips make a _fwip_ sound smacking together. Steve’s mouth opens and closes. He looks like he’s just heard Bucky say something unbearably sweet in a completely indecipherable language. He swallows. “But you’d still love that. Right?”

Bucky wants to squirm. Squirming’s a _yes_ but not a clear enough _yes,_ not when Steve isn’t asking rhetorically, and he doesn’t seem to be. So he runs his tongue along the flat edges of his top teeth and says, “Yeah. I’d drink my own tears for you. I’d carry around my tears for you, if you’re sure you don’t wanna drink ‘em yourself.”

Steve tilts his head like he’s considering it.

“Steve. I’d love whatever shit you come up with, all right? Bottle me the fuck up if you need.”

“Oh, that’s an idea. All of you stuffed in a plastic bottle, holes poked in the top like I’m keeping bugs in there?”

“You are keeping bugs in there. What do I look like?”

“A pile of cockroaches.” And Steve knee-walks even closer. Bucky uses the little range of movement he has, leashed like this, to rub the top of his head against Steve’s cheek, and Steve sighs, and kisses the part in his hair.

Bucky pulls back to look at him. At the dry skin around his nose and the fluttering of his eyelashes. Every movement shifts Bucky’s shirt against his roughed-up nipples and catches his breath, makes him too conscious of being hard. “Are my clothes staying on?”

Steve strokes a hand down the side of Bucky’s face. Silky but for the skip of his callouses. “I did think about taking them off. Keeping you naked and locked up for me. But this isn’t about the rest of your stupid fuckmeat. Just this one bit.” His hand closes around the line of Bucky’s jaw, like the skin and fat there is a mouse he’s scooping up in his talons.

When Bucky opens his jaws and says, “Whatever you want,” there’s resistance from the left side of his mouth, and the pain from the grip intensifies.

Steve rolls his eyes. “Oh, _no_. It’s whatever _you_ want. Come on. I guess you can take the boy out of the living room, but you can’t take the need to state the fucking obvious out of the boy.”

Bucky laughs, and the pain in his jaw comes in waves now. “What?”

“Shut it. All I’m trying to say is that it’s obscene you don’t keep this bit under lock and key like all this other junk.” He pokes Bucky in the ribs, a sharpness that makes him want to swoon. “You’re lucky I don’t sew a hood over your face for everyone’s benefit. I could put a needle and thread right through your neck, couldn’t I?”

“No, I’m—I would be lucky if you did, Steve. Not to argue. I would really fucking love that.”

“Oh? What happened to it being whatever I want? What I want is to be generous, and hide these fucking repulsive holes—” and now he stops holding onto Bucky’s jaw, and gives little squeezes to his nose and lips—“under a nice coat of makeup instead. I picked it all out just for you. What do you say?”

“Thanks, Steve. It means a lot.”

“Aww, good puppy.” Steve pats him on the head and Bucky stares at him mutinously. He’s ignored.

Steve turns to the collected makeup and begins corralling it into a tighter cluster. Then picking through it, lifting things into the air and frowning at them and putting them back down. It’s all very performative and pointless and Bucky’s heart swells.

Waving a brush through the air like an orchestra conductor, Steve says offhand, “You asked me why it’s all purple.”

“I did.”  
  
“You want to take another guess?” He puts the brush down and grabs the eyeshadow palette, flipping it open to study his own eye in the included mirror.

“You’re turning me into a blueberry? You gonna roll me down the hall and sing about how I’m a spoiled little monster?”

“I do that all the time, Buck. It doesn’t take makeup. No, I’m seeing how you look in lavender.”

“Because?” And he remembers something Steve was telling him a while ago, something about McCarthyism. “Shit, Steve, this isn’t _political_ , is it? I’m not doing it if you’re gonna get—”

“No. There’s no politics. For now that is. I just can’t decide where I stand on the value of collective action for you. Everyone smacking you around together, that is. Think what good you’d do for the working people with three different fists up your cunt, huh?”

“Fuck, Steve.”

“What? You don’t like when I’ll say I’ll get three nice, unionized folks to come feel around inside your ass to see if they can find anything? You spend all that time sucking the whole tristate area up there like a hoover. Some small objects must get stuck.”

Bucky somewhere between growls and whines. His left hand gets halfway up to covering his face before he remembers himself and forces it down to his thigh in a fist.

It’s not impossible that this is what’s going to bring him to tears again: the thought of himself laid out face-down with his ass in the air, surrounded by faceless people in coveralls pulling on rubber gloves and spreading him open, Steve looming over the whole operation in safety goggles, _tsk_ ing if Bucky moves even a centimeter.

“Bucky.” Steve’s voice is slap-sharp. Bucky makes eye contact. “I asked you a question. Do you not like it when I say that?”

He feels like a balloon deflating. Warm as he focuses on Steve. “I do like it, Steve. I want you to talk about. Them using me as a picket sign. Stick me on their arms and wave me in the air. Okay, Steve? I like it.” And he does; his like of it growls and hums in his body.

“If you didn’t, who would? But this isn’t the point.”

“What is?”

“The lavender, asshole. It’s not political. It’s a test-run. If this looks even one-third good, I want to dye your hair.”

“Lavender?”

“I thought you said you wanted a shock collar. You expect me to give you a shock collar while you walk around looking human?” He gives a quick tug to Bucky’s hair, eliciting a muddle of shocked syllables.

Bucky licks his lips. Tries not to thrust his hips against nothing. “You think I look human?”

“I spoke too soon. But you could look more like a nice little poodle, obeying its owner’s wishes. Training to bring home a blue ribbon.”

“Purple ribbon.”  

“No. If you earn another Purple Heart, we’re gonna have words.”

“Oh, ruin my fun.” He hardens his gaze for a moment. “That goes for you too, you know. We’re both decorated enough.”

Steve nods. Shrugs. “Let me talk. Training to win the bronze at the dog show, and even that’s a bit of a pipe dream. But none of it’ll work if you don’t look like a good poodle. And good poodles come in pastels.”

“Pretty sure they come in drab brown too, Steve.”

“Yet someone’s getting bleached. Funny how that works.” He rubs the top of Bucky’s head, mussing his hair. “I’ll bleach this greasy rat’s nest, and lay down some lavender. And then we can start clipping you into shape.”

“But you’re checking first.”

“I’m checking first. Wouldn’t want to rub bleach into your scalp—” He scratches a harsh line across Bucky’s scalp, from back to front, an intimation of the pain he could leave if it weren’t for the hair there—“only to find out you look even uglier purple.”

“Oh, sure. How could you even stand to look at me then?”

“Exactly. And it’s not like you could figure out how to dye it back yourself.”

“Completely an unsolvable problem. I get it, Steve. You should really make sure.”

Steve smiles. “No shit.” He kisses Bucky’s cheek. Bucky hums with pleasure.

Steve unscrews the little glass pot, and scrapes a pointer finger through the contents. With his other hand, he grabs Bucky’s ear. Cups his palm around it, fingers gripping the soft curve where it connects with the skull. The pain is hot, and tugging, and there’s a peaceful lulling heartbeat sound in that ear now, like being underwater on only one side.

Steve holds him still that way, like he isn’t already kept in place by the bike lock. Bucky blinks hard at him, at the concentration on his face like Bucky really is just something he’s giving a new coat of paint. Then Steve presses his fingertip, covered in purple, to the point between Bucky’s eyebrows.

Cross-eyed, Bucky watches the finger drag down the bridge of his nose. Over the tip, flattening it briefly, and then a pressure on each of his nostrils. The stuff has the texture of clay, but spread thin.  Steve rubs it in slowly, and firmly. Like he’s painting on the wall of a cave. Not like he’s handling a human face at all.

They’re both silent as Steve dips his finger in again, and smears more over Bucky’s nose, rubbing with circular motions, and small strokes that make _tap tap_ noises on bone. Then a line of purple up his forehead, meeting his hairline. And spreading from there, skimming the tops of his eyebrows. Bucky can feel his skin moving separate from the rest of him.

Purple over his cheekbones. Purple in the dip above his mouth, and his lip gets pressed uncomfortably against his teeth, shifting with Steve’s hand so he can feel every minute space between his incisors. He squeaks involuntarily, bitten off, as Steve rubs back and forth there more than he probably needs to, squinting, like this is detail work. Sensitive. Precise. 

Steve pauses in touching Bucky’s chin. He looks thoughtful, mouth open, and Bucky takes the breather to ask, “Aren’t you supposed to use a brush for this?”

“Oh, am I?”

“I thought so. Not very sophisticated this way, is it?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying—” And Steve grabs his hair like a ponytail and pulls almost straight back. Between his cupped ear and the yanking at his scalp and with the lock a solid snake around his throat, he’s captured, helpless, feeling like he’s vibrating, staring wide-eyed and shallow-breathed at Steve.

Who looks fucking ecstatic. Who looks like Bucky just made his day by fucking up. “Where the fuck,” he asks, adding a brief bite of nails to the back of Bucky’s ear, “does a dirty chewed-up little bitch like you get off calling me unsophisticated?”

Bucky whimpers. Steve’s face is beautiful and alive and Bucky wants nothing more than to be made dirtier, to be chewed up into smaller pieces and swallowed.  He sounds hoarse when he says, “Didn’t mean it.”

Steve says, “Oh, that’s convenient.” With the ear and hair as handles, he tilts Bucky’s head from side to side, examining him. “It’s too bad I can’t slap you without fucking up my handiwork. Or, I’m sorry—Is my work too unsophisticated to matter?”

“I’m really sorry, Steve. I respect your artistic choices, all right? I respect your vision and all that.”

Steve snorts. “Did I ask? And that doesn’t solve my problem.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. Remember? I need to hurt you for being rude. But I can’t slap you. Is that so hard to understand?”

“Oh. Well, then you can just—”

“What?”

It’s obvious, so much so that for all he knows Steve is only pretending cluelessness. Only tricking Bucky into asking for it.  “Why not just hurt my nipples more then?”

No hands on his ear or in his hair. But he holds his head still where Steve left it, tilted, neck craned. It’s easy. Briefly, and then Steve’s saying, “What, these?” and pinching both of Bucky’s sore, stiff nipples through his shirt. 

Bucky’s mouth opens like a scream, but the only sound he makes is a gasp, and his body tries to lift off the floor, into the air, his neck craning further, and arousal panging in his dick, spiraling up through his core, leaving his hips strained upward and his chest raised. Presented to Steve, who keeps squeezing his nipples, eliciting fuzzy, pained noises from Bucky’s gaping mouth. Steve’s waiting.

On his first try, Bucky _yap_ s like a dog with a cold. The second time, he makes words, even if they’re high and brittle. “Those, Steve. Yes.”

“You want me to do what with these?” He pulls, stretching slowly, enough that a new layer of sharp heat sparks through Bucky’s chest.

“I—Hurt. Them, Steve. Please.” He clears his throat between words, and bites his lip, and wants, on a base, instinctual level, to curl into a ball.

“Oh. Well, if you insist, Buck.” And he tightens his hold, and twists at the same time as pulling, both of them to Bucky’s left, and then both to his right, and it’s like being gnawed open, and he can’t believe he doesn’t come from this alone, from the blood pulsing to his groin, from the tightness of every part of him, anticipating, planning how to take more.

He sobs, vocally. Sniffles and whines and feels his face scrunching up, and he’s so close to tipping over the edge, but he knows there’s no way Steve’s trying to make him come tonight. This isn’t about the rest of his stupid fuckmeat.

Still twisting, so that Bucky’s rocking with it now, desperate for equilibrium and the bike lock pressing into him, Steve says, “What, are you going to cry now? I hurt your feelings by disciplining you a little, dear?”

Of course, Bucky’s already crying. A few tears leak down, but Steve stops hurting him now to brush them away. Both hands, both eyes. Stopping them from fucking up the makeup with tear tracks.

Bucky whines, and hisses as the fabric of his t-shirt chafes against his chest. He says. “Yes. No. Jesus, I’m obviously fucking gonna—” He takes a deep breath—“ _cry_. What’d you bring me here for?”

“Well, gee, Buck. I thought I brought you here to be tender with you.” He brushes a thumb over Bucky’s right nipple so Bucky lets loose a grumbling whine like his sleep’s been interrupted. “That feeling tender enough?”

His whining mixes with a laugh. “Fuck. Yes. Thank you.”

“That’s right.” The same thumb, wiping more tears away. “’Thank you.’ And what else do you say?”

“What? I don’t know.”

“Yes. You do.” He kisses Bucky’s forehead. Very lightly, probably not disturbing the makeup. “I reprimanded you, and now you’re?”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Steve. I’m sorry.”

“There we go. Of course you are.” A kiss to the eyebrow this time. No danger of fucking anything up there. Bucky leans into the touch, and hums a little when it ends. Steve smiles at him, and says, sing-song, “I don’t like to think what would happen if you weren’t,” and goes right back to holding Bucky still with a hand around his ear.

Even with the pain fresh in his nipples, his dick still too hard in the confines of his jeans, he’s able to settle, to slow his breathing. To not think about much besides watching and feeling Steve work.

Steve scoops more purple from the pot, and smears it over areas he already covered. He handles Bucky’s whole face with familiarity, firmness, prodding at his cheeks and dolloping them with makeup before wiping with his fingers, almost slapping, to blend it in. With a last poke at Bucky’s nostril, he pulls back and examines him.

Bucky asks, “Do I look nice?”

“My honest opinion? No. You look like a goddamn chimneysweep.”

“It’s not what you wanted?”

“That’s funny. No.” He leaves the pot uncapped on the floor and picks up the lipstick. “I wanted a pretty and pleasant pet, but all the pound had was you, so you’re what I’ve got.”

When he twists the lipstick out of its tube, it’s a shocking bright light purple, glossy and smooth.

Bucky says, “Sorry for that,” and Steve says, “Nope. No talking,” and wraps the hand not holding the lipstick around Bucky’s chin. He tilts Bucky’s face upward, then presses at the hinges of his jaw so he’ll open his mouth into an _O._  

The lipstick slides from the middle of his lower lip up to the corner, velvety wet like a pointed tongue. Back down, crossing over, and to the other corner, watched by Steve’s half-lidded eyes. Bucky’s lips feel wobbly, squished together and out as they are, and his jaw aches under Steve’s fingers.

He blinks at Steve dumbly, watching his eyebrows like they’re a sunset. As Steve slicks lavender down the arc of his top lip—starting from the center and out again—he registers the sensation of his face having nothing to do with the rest of his body. Nothing to do with the rest of his fuckmeat.

He’s a mouth for Steve to decorate, and eyes for following Steve, and he floats on the surface of the water like that. What’s below the water, full of blood and nerves? His body? Sharks? Not his problem.

He licks at the flesh of his cheeks pressed close around his tongue. Watches Steve, whose mouth is open, touch up the skinny corners of his lips with small strokes of the lipstick.

Then Steve says, “Close,” but keeps Bucky’s mouth pried open until he starts obeying, working against Steve’s grip. This means he bites his cheeks when he closes, but such fat worm-like folds of his cheeks that it doesn’t much hurt.

Steve says, “Like this,” and folds his lips in and opens and closes his mouth a few times, making a plasticky _pop_ sound where his lips meet.

Bucky follows suit. Pop. Pop. Distributing the color. Steve checks him over, and fixes the edges on his lower lip with a gently applied fingertip. He nods, and says, “You’ve looked worse,” and brings the palm of his hand to cover Bucky’s mouth. Bucky kisses him, and sees the purple blotch he leaves when Steve pulls away.

Steve won’t slap his palm across Bucky’s cheek right now, but he slaps him on the right shoulder hard enough to jolt and Bucky smiles. “Thanks for hitting me, Steve.”

“It’s only partially a hardship. Close your eyes.”

Something small and spongy caresses his shuttered lid. Sweeps over him in uncoordinated lines, through the base of his eyelashes, tracing the upper curve of his eyeball beneath the skin. Here and there, the touch stops, as Steve presumably puts more on the applicator, but it resumes soon enough. A hint of roughness when he drags the applicator from the delicate skin of the eyelid to the firmer, bony space beside it.

Steve gives the other eye the same treatment. His bad breath is warm on Bucky’s face. The massage of the eyeshadow is almost too good, but Bucky thrills at the thought of how easily it could turn bad. How much easy access he’s giving Steve to his vulnerable eyes. Steve could poke them right out without thinking.

The applicator disappears, and this time doesn’t come back. The _click_ of the eyeshadow palette shutting. Steve murmurs, “Keep those things closed,” and Bucky says, “Wouldn’t dream of otherwise.”

“Oh? And since when’d you get enough brain power for dreams?” A knifelike point makes contact with the inner corner of Bucky’s eye. Steve leaves it to dig in.

Bucky shrugs his left shoulder and smiles. “Well how else could you make them all come true?”

“Jesus fucking.” Steve draws the pencil along Bucky’s lash line in a confident swoop. “Have we not trained the Hallmark out of you yet?”

“I’m afraid it’s chronic, doc.”  

The pencil swooshes over his other lid, and then Steve draws tiny flicks along both, evening up the lines or just wanting to prod at Bucky’s eyeballs some more. Finally, he stops, and sighs. “I need you to open them now.” Bucky opens them, taking in the pencil held loosely between Steve’s fingers, and the sleeplike steadiness of Steve’s breath.

Steve winces dramatically. “You know, only five minutes without your soulless lizard eyes staring at me and I got lulled into a false sense of security?” So Bucky closes his eyes again, but Steve says, “Did I say to fuckin’ do that?” and he rectifies his mistake.

“It’s hard for me to follow instructions, Steve.”

Steve pulls the mascara wand out of its casing with a bristly slurping sound. “Like that’s news to me. I’ve seen you try to use the dishwasher, fuckhole.” ****  
  
Soon after they moved in, Steve ordered Bucky to fill the dishwasher with one arm taped to his calf, then made a valiant effort to stuff him in there with the dishes. Nothing got washed that day.

Bucky bats his eyelashes. “Wanna see me try again?”

“Stop changing the subject. And stay still for me now, all right?”

Bucky nods. Steve’s hand pets at his thigh. The mascara brush draws close to his eye, coated thickly with purple, and Bucky pictures himself not moving at all. Steve isn’t going to poke his eyes out, and his body knows better than to overreact.  
  
But it’s instinct. The brush touches the base of his lashes and he flinches away. Steve smacks his thigh where he was petting him. Only hard enough to sting for a moment, and to redirect his focus to Steve’s eyes. “Be good,” Steve says without much inflection.

“Right, sorry. I’ll do better.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

He sees it. Bucky sits patiently through Steve flicking the brush up and through his eyelashes, repeating the motion until the brush runs dry and then stuffing it back in the tube for more. Wet pulls of mascara on his lower lashes, and now, on the other eye, the same thing. Bucky’s blinking a little rapidly, but that seems to be okay, only serving to get his eyelashes wetter, and more intensely purple probably.

He wonders what would happen if Steve did this for an hour. If he put a hundred coats of mascara on Bucky’s lashes. If he made them stiff brittle spider legs that drooped over his eyes under their own weight so he couldn’t see that well. If Steve beat him until he sobbed the mascara into an oil spill down his face. If Steve took photos of him like that instead of letting him wash it off. 

Steve might do that one day. But Steve _isn’t_ going to poke his eyes out; he’s known that for a long fucking time.

 

 

 

A Cheerio winged Bucky in the shoulder. He picked it off the ground and slipped it into his mouth. He said, “Cheerios are my favorite invention.”

Steve scoffed. “You said that about steel wool two days ago.”

Another Cheerio hit Bucky in the forehead. Before eating that too, he said, “What of it? I’m a finicky man.” And as he chewed, he dug his thumb into his thigh, where the skin was abraded from its scrubbing.

Most of the time, he liked to eat like a regular person. But sometimes he wanted to kneel next to the table while Steve threw Cheerios into his mouth. About nineteen throws out of twenty, Steve missed the mark, and then Bucky had to eat off of the floor, or rescue cereal from the inside of his own shirt collar, or from between his pressed-together thighs.

He opened his mouth, and the next Cheerio Steve threw went nowhere near his face. He twisted, and reached an arm behind him to grab it. Steve tapped his spoon against the side of the cereal bowl. “Finicky. Forgetful. Fucking terrible at catching with your mouth, come on.”

“Wanna improve my skills?”

Stuffing a spoonful of Cheerios into his mouth and chewing slowly, Steve crooked a finger at Bucky and beckoned him closer in lieu of answering. Bucky shuffled toward him on his knees, and when he was close enough that Steve didn’t need to exert any effort to reach him, Steve yanked on his tie, a command to keep moving. To get all the way pressed up against Steve’s chair.

Bucky kissed Steve’s rib cage. “What, am I practicing catching shorter-range now?”

Steve swallowed his cereal. “Dunno. Might have better things to do with you.”  He laid the back of the spoon against Bucky’s cheek, the metal chill like their apartment, and ran a hand over his smoothed-back hair. He kept it too light to be called petting, so as not to get any product on his skin.  

“Better? What’d I do to deserve that?”

“Well, you’ve been mostly good this morning. I was thinking about rewarding you.”

Bucky’s mouth collapsed into a grin. “Yeah? How so?”

“Well.” The spoon rapped his cheekbone, and then Steve flipped it over, pressing the curved tip beneath Bucky’s eyebrow. The metal glimmered in his vision, and everything else in front of him became a blur. Steve slid the spoon lower, and Bucky’s eyelids twitched shut in response.  “What if I took your sight away permanently? A lot easier than dealing with blindfolds.”

The spoon moving back and forth, outlining the top of his eyeball, made him moan. “And you’re gonna do that by, uh. With that?”

“How else? I could scoop these right out of the sockets. You’d let me.”

“What would you do with them?”

Still tracing the shape of his eye. Still threatening. “Well, wouldn’t want ‘em to go to waste. I’ll eat one and you’ll eat the other. Equal distribution of wealth. How’s that?”

Bucky rolled his shoulders, stuck his tongue in his cheek. His body was made of affection and light. He said, “It’s good. But you’re not really gonna.”

Steve grunted and hit him on the nose with the spoon. Bucky’s eyes blinked open. Steve was smiling. He bent down, and pulled Bucky up by the tie, and kissed him, only biting his tongue once before letting him go.

Straightening up, Steve said, “You don’t know that. And I wouldn’t test me if I was you. But I also wouldn’t talk so much if I was you, knowing how stupid I’d sound. So you might be a risk-taker.” He went back to eating his cereal.

Bucky laughed, breathy, and laid his head on Steve’s thigh. “Uh-huh, a real risk. Sure, Buster.”

“What?”

He lifted his head to raise his eyebrows at Steve. “Keaton. You can pour a pail of water on me and mop it off any day.”

“Are you flirting with me?”

“Yes? I’m always flirting with you. What the hell kind of question is that? Am I fucking flirting with you. No, I’m reading you the obituaries.”

Steve tucked a knuckle under Bucky’s chin, nudging his head up further. “But are you flirting now or are you just complaining? Do you see why it’s confusing?” 

“It’s not like the two are mutually exclusive. ‘Ow that really hurt. I’ll be bruised for days.’ See? That’s both. Most stuff is both.”

Steve still looked confused, but he was smiling. “All right. Good to know.” He filled his spoon with cereal. “Back up.”

Bucky did, until there was a foot of space between them. And Steve flung the whole spoonful of Cheerios at him, so they scattered over his body and across the floor. Bucky yelped, and started laughing. All Steve did was nod at the nearest Cheerio.

“Well? Don’t waste them. And don’t use your hands either.”

Without being asked, Bucky crossed his wrists behind his back. He said, still laughing, “You’re a fucking asshole.”

“Can the flirting. Get to it.”

“Aye aye.” Bucky shifted, and dipped all the way forward to capture a Cheerio between his teeth. He was forced to kiss the floor in the process. And as he straightened, chewing, his body swayed, and he looked at Steve looking at him, and they both laughed. 

 

 

 

Steve fans through the upper lashes on Bucky’s right eye with one finger, and they beat against him like moth wings. Then he plunges the wand in and out of the tube again, and begins tugging the brush’s bristles through Bucky’s eyebrow. A flat repetition, and a smear of wetness.

He says, “I thought about just shaving these off. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, you know. Why should anyone care whether you sweat in your eyes? Not like you make good use of them.”

“Shave? You wouldn’t pluck?”

“You mean would I tweeze the hairs out one by one? _Now_ we’re talking about more trouble than something’s worth.” He mascaras the other eyebrow. Two slick purple cartoon stripes on Bucky’s forehead.

Steve abandons the mascara in favor of sliding a hand into Bucky’s hair. Scrunching into a fist but not pulling enough to hurt. His eyes flick up and down Bucky’s face, and he’s almost smiling.

Bucky says, “Project status?”

“Just one more step. Keep—Well. Keep _barely_ behaving.” He releases Bucky’s hair. Runs his knuckles down Bucky’s throat, and over the bike lock. Continuing down his chest, down one pec, almost reaching his nipple, and Bucky tenses, but Steve stops there. He folds his mouth up small and looks into Bucky’s eyes, taunting.

He goes for the eyeshadow palette again, and this time the brush, like he’s actually taking critique on his work. But he isn’t sophisticated about it; he pounds the brush into the assembled shades of purple like he’s working a mortar and pestle. Gets powder distributed throughout the poof of its bristles.

And then he cups the side of Bucky’s face with his other hand. The heel of his palm sits under Bucky’s chin, and his fingers curve up, little finger at the squared edge where neck and jaw join, ring finger at the opening of the ear. Across the middle of Bucky’s lips, he lays his thumb, and Bucky kisses it.

He hears the air leave Steve in a whoosh. The skin around Steve’s eyes is crinkled up. Steve says, “Yeah, all right,” and thumps the brush against Bucky’s cheek on the same side where he’s holding him. The bristles are soft, and they disperse under the pressure Steve exerts. It’s like a kitten is aggressively shoving itself into his face.

The slow process: Steve butting the brush against him and pausing to pack more powdered eyeshadow into its bristles; continuing the fluffy onslaught; pausing for more powder again; repeat. The eyeshadow is balanced open on Steve’s thigh, and he pushes the brush into the powder without looking. He only looks at Bucky the whole time.

And except for squeezing his eyes shut when some loose powder rains down from the brush kissing his forehead, Bucky looks at Steve. The creases in Steve’s forehead and the wonky lines of his nose. The way he holds his mouth off-center.

The last thing Steve does is bump the brush against Bucky’s nose. The bristles and the eyeshadow together tickle, and he blinks fast, and Steve drops the brush to the floor. He slips his hand down Bucky’s face in a sweeping motion, keeping his thumb where it is but tucking the rest of his fingers into a fist under Bucky’s chin. This way, he lifts Bucky’s head and then lowers it. Examining.

He says, “We’ve got our finished product. You wanna see?”

Barely moving his lips behind Steve’s thumb, Bucky says, “Yeah.” But instead of doing anything, Steve pushes harder with his thumb. Bucky scrunches his brow, then gets it. He kisses him there again. Steve lets go.

He wrestles his phone from the pocket of his jeans, and when he lifts it to Bucky’s face, it’s open to the front-facing camera. Bucky’s immediate reaction is to bark with laughter.

His skin is patchy, pearly lavender powder clinging all over, but interrupted by coarse, underlying streaks of a darker, greyish purple. His chimneysweep makeup, buffed to a shine but not at all covered. Drying and aggressive even as he glitters when he turns his head.

He giggles through, “I look diseased.”

“When don’t you?”

“Steve, I look like I’m _molting_.”

“I have to repeat my earlier question.”

His eyes look nicer, the eyeshadow there consistently vivid, darker purple eyeliner and mascara making him appear more solid and cohesive. Even if his purple eyebrows are uneven shapes, and his lipstick smudges up from the presence of Steve’s thumb. He’s definitely lavender. He’s more poodle than person as soon as he tries lolling his tongue out of his mouth and panting at the camera.

Steve says, “There you are.” He pats Bucky’s head, and says in an encouraging voice, “What a mediocre boy.”

Bucky stops panting to grin. Technically at his own reflection, but really at Steve.  “What, you like it? You wanted a poodle with mange?”

“Why not? I was already getting a poodle with rabies. You’re a two-for-one deal.” He waves the phone. “You done looking?”

“What, you don’t want me taking pictures?”

“Nope.” Steve pulls the phone away, and now Bucky grins straight at him. “I’m taking the pictures. Stay there.”

Bucky raises his chin to bare his throat, bike lock included. “Yeah, I was in real danger of running off.”

“I didn’t ask.” Steve starts snapping pictures. Getting all sides of Bucky, pushing the phone in close to his face, standing to document the perspective of someone looking down at Bucky like he’s something small and helpless.

When he’s done, he sets the phone on Bucky’s bed, and lowers himself to straddle Bucky’s thighs. His weight’s a surprise, and Bucky wants to thrust against him, to do something about his long-ignored erection, but knows he won’t. Steve’s slotted in tight against him, thighs spread so his knees bracket Bucky’s hips. One massive hand gropes at his chest, pushing him more firmly against the table leg.

Steve kisses Bucky’s lavender mouth. Hungry, invasive, sucking on his tongue like it’s an oyster he’s trying to pry from its shell. Biting fiercely at his top lip. And Bucky’s hands are trapped beneath Steve, flat to his thighs. All he can do is sit there and take it and move his mouth a little, weakly, in response.

Steve stops kissing him. He says, “Okay, good,” and climbs off.

Bucky says, “Yeah. Good.” He’s hazy with too much and not enough touch. His mouth swollen, his nipples still buzzing at him when his shirt shifts. Somewhere in there, he’s desperate to get jerked off, but the need’s muffled. Buried beneath blankets, beneath Steve holding his face still, beneath being kept in one place and watched.

Coming would mean re-exposing himself to urgent sensation. Ripping the blankets off.

Steve’s next to him, turning the key in the lock, and unwrapping the cord from around Bucky’s neck. Bucky doesn’t do anything with the newfound freedom. He lets his head rest against the table leg and closes his eyes.

“Steve?”  
  
“That’s my name. Good guess.”

“Shut up. I’m checking—I’m not coming tonight, right?” He opens one eye.

“Of course not. Why would you come?” Steve tugs on Bucky’s left hand, and Bucky walks toward him on his knees. His legs ache, he realizes now.

“Oh, no reason.” Steve takes him by the shoulder, pulling, patting at Bucky’s hip, convincing him to lie down with his head in Steve’s lap. His legs stretch out and scream quietly at the ability to stretch. He closes his eyes, and Steve scratches his scalp.

“You being a twisted pervert about your paintjob isn’t my problem. If we ignore it, it’ll go away on its own. You want to complain?”

“Complain? How could I ever?”

“I don’t know if you’ve met you, Buck, but you’re pretty whiny.”

“Got no clue what you’re talking about. I respect all your decisions.”

“Uh-huh.” Steve smacks his exposed cheek. It hardly hurts.

Bucky says, “You’re sweet. Are we washing this off me?”

“You don’t want to go to sleep and see how ugly you look in the morning?”

His face a mass of lingering purple like scattered bruises. Mascara and eyeliner smeared under his eyes. He’ll look sloppy and uncared for. “Shit, fuck. I want that. I want that for Christmas.”

“This is really shaping up to be the best Christmas ever.”

Bucky nuzzles Steve’s thigh, then yawns, and pushes himself into sitting. Steve doesn’t stop him. They sit cross-legged with their knees touching. Bucky asks, “Your Christmas dreams come true, then? That intimate for you?”

“It’s always intimate for me.”  
  
“But how you wanted, I mean. Was it? We can do-over if you need. I’ve still got some fight in me.”

Steve smiles. He blinks slowly, and lifts his hand to stuff two fingers in Bucky’s mouth. They hold his tongue like they’re cuddling with it. “Nope. No fighting. I got what I wanted from you. Fucking finally, you had _some_ purpose.”

Bucky bites Steve’s fingers, trapping them. When he releases him, Steve removes his fingers, pinching Bucky’s tongue with his nails on his way out. Bucky’s nerves light up like neon with the pleasure of it, but he wills that away.

He says, “Wanna join me on the table then, stud? In case of blizzard, always huddle for warmth.”

Steve grabs Bucky’s hair in a fist high on the side of his head. He pulls him forward, so that Bucky’s bent, staring up at him. And then he kisses his purple eyelids, left to right, and Bucky feels liquid, and contained.

 

 

 

 

Steve’s knuckles have barely grazed the door when Bucky says, “Come in. Come on.” The bathwater’s still hot and high around him. He’s holding the soap in his right hand, which dangles over the tub’s edge, but hasn’t gotten around to using it.

Steve enters. Closes the door carefully behind him. Bucky asks, “Still?” and Steve shrugs.

“Sorry. But you have a right to your privacy. I don’t make the rules. I just enforce them.”

“You enforce them with enthusiasm. Also, you do make them.”

“Oh, yeah. I do.” Steve sits on the floor by Bucky’s head, nudging the hand with the soap out of his way. “And your bitching won’t change that.”

Bucky moves the soap to lie on his collarbone. He draws circles on his skin, lazily lathering. Steve doesn’t seem like he’s gonna say anything else, so Bucky asks, “Are you really dying my hair?” He soaps up his neck, and stretches to get to his shoulder blades.

“Do you want me to?”

“Can I think about it?”

“That depends. Can you think at all?”

Bucky presses his face into his own soapy shoulder, then lifts his head to smile at Steve. “Well, you know the answer to that. But I’ll let you know how I feel.”

Steve nods. “Feeling. All right. Second best to thinking.”

Bucky touches the soap to his left knee where it breaches the water. He covers it with his palm and slides the soap around that way, silky and not accomplishing much. He watches it like it might run out the door. “You think about doin’ other kinds of makeup on me?”

“Elaborate?”

“That fake injury shit. Liquid latex. You could give me fake bruises and wounds.” The other knee, and a sliver of exposed thigh.

“Now why would I do that when I can give you the real thing?”

“Fine, real bruises. But fake wounds.” He looks at Steve. The soap won’t run away. “And scars. The kinds of things you wouldn’t really give me.”

“Doesn’t that take a lot of practice?”

“Probably. I haven’t looked into it or anything. But if you’re ever lookin’ for a new skill.” He sits up fully to get the rest of his torso. “I think you’d like it, and I know I’d like it. You could even get real talented and move on to Hollywood.”

“Oh, I get it now. You just want me to take you to Hollywood.”

“That’s between me and my dick.” To demonstrate, he dips the soap into the water, finding his soft, submerged dick. Then back out, the soap slimier now.

“You’re not allowed to fuck a movie star, sorry.”

“Nah, I’m thinking I’d angle for a set designer. More my type.”  He didn’t fuck anyone last time he was in Hollywood. His skin crawled every time a stranger brushed past him on the street, and he did his best to pretend his dick didn’t exist, for all that it made itself known at inopportune moments.

He wouldn’t mind going out to a nice movie palace with Steve, then taking a train back to the motel he stayed in before, and letting Steve fuck him on the floor, face and knees raw on the filthy carpet, shitty TV going in the background, and then maybe have one of the striped pillowcases thrown over his head, Steve searching for broken springs in the mattress to hurt him with, and he’d feel safe and clean.

Steve says, “Let’s start with dying your hair, okay? Or not dying it. Whichever I decide.”

Bucky says, “Whichever you decide, yep,” and draws a line down Steve’s nose with the slimy soap, and laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Steve threatens to gouge out Bucky's eyes with a spoon and then eat one while Bucky eats the other. He treats it lightly, Bucky's perfectly calm and aware that he's not serious, and they don't go into further detail.
> 
> 2\. If you're wondering, Bucky's Buster Keaton flirtation is referring to the moment at 3:13 in this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVo13BYbwLw
> 
> 3\. SILENTWALRUS HAS NOW DRAWN BEAUTIFUL ART OF THE MAKEUP SCENE THAT YOU CAN LOOK AT [HERE.](https://silentwalrus1.tumblr.com/post/159878157848/so-i-decided-to-draw-a-scene-from-how-do-they-get) YOU SHOULD LOOK AT IT. IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Never Gonna Run Outta Date Night Activities](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351714) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




End file.
